


Scurvy

by Ginger_Cat



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: (and again), Abusive Relationship, Bad Dreams, First Kiss, First Time, John is Smarter than he looks, Loving Sex, M/M, Mummy Holmes knows everything, Oblivious Sherlock, Sexual Dysfunction, Sherlock forgets to eat (again), abusive sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-08-24 05:11:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8358625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginger_Cat/pseuds/Ginger_Cat
Summary: One step closer to becoming a pirate.orIn which Sherlock discovers that sex isn't all that bad, if it's with John Watson.





	1. Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy! Comments and CC are much appreciated, as always :)
> 
> **Also, I should mention that I started writing this before TAB aired. So for all intensive purposes just assume that TAB didn't happen in this timeline. Sherlock figures out waaaaay too much about himself in that episode for this story to make sense!

                In my dreams, I am burning.

                The feeling starts as a tingling sensation in my extremities, as if blood circulation has been absent for several minutes. It’s not necessarily unpleasant, but it’s not pleasurable either, so I attempt to ignore it, at first—as I do most other tedious bodily sensations—but the feeling steadily intensifies. It expands down my arms and up my legs, and then morphs from a tingle to an itch (a more intrusive excitation). I manage to avoid scratching it for another minute or two, but then it reaches my torso and crosses the threshold from nuisance to pain.

                There are no flames, just the feeling. The hot, itching, blistering; the dissolution of skin, sloughing off in sheets of burnt, black carbon. My physical body peeling away layer by layer. I feel these things but I don’t see them, which makes them all the more frightening. As I open my mouth to release the heat within, I exhale a scream. And just when I cannot possibly take any more, I awaken.

                The first time it happened I lay in my bed, sweating and rapping my fingertips on the sheets, fascinated. Here I was, completely sober, having dreams that I hadn’t had since my opioid withdrawals.

***

                I suppose, in a way, John Watson _was_ a sort of drug. He wasn’t like the stupefactious happiness of morphine, or the sharpness and vigor of cocaine, nor the energized focus of nicotine. He was more like the giddiness of caffeine: pure, heart-beating, belly-leaping _excitement_. Though I rather detest the use of the word “giddy” in reference to myself, I believe the definition is most accurate for the circumstances: “disorienting and alarming, but exciting.”

                My brother so kindly translated this definition for me on one of his more unwelcome visits (notice I said “more,” as they are always unwelcome). “So, John Watson has changed your orientation.”

                I was lounging on the sofa and he was standing in front of the doorway, swinging his umbrella back and forth on his wrist. I frowned at him from over my laptop screen. “That’s not what I said.”

                “Oh? It’s not?” Mycroft’s lips stretched so thin that he adopted a frightening, alien-like countenance—which is how he always looked when he smiled.

                “ _Dis_ oriented, Mycroft. I’ve _lost_ orientation.”

                “You were oriented before?” he asked, in his uninterested way. “Toward women, or to men?”

                I scowled. He was still swinging the umbrella pendulously, as if he was making an attempt at hypnosis. His other hand was tucked tightly into his trouser pocket. Too tightly, in fact. The trousers were too small—he was gaining weight again.

                “I _was_ a sociopath,” I clarified, “and now I’m not.”

                Now Mycroft really looked bored. “Oh, I thought we were talking about sex. Pity.”

                I rolled my eyes and looked back at the screen. There had been a homicide in Wembley, and a very mysterious one at that. I was trying very much to care, but I all I could think of was, _I wonder how he is? How he’s handling the baby? Does he detest domesticity, yet?_ And, more subtly and unadmittedly, _Does he miss me?_

                Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this was what had become of me. I’d been reduced to a sodding pile of caring and insecurity and abject _loneliness_. “Not everything is about sex, Mycroft,” I retorted, the come-back of a twelve-year-old all that I could muster.

                In reply, Mycroft’s mouth went practically two-dimensional. “Ah, little brother. How much you still have to learn.”

                It wasn’t though. It wasn’t about sex, or sexual attraction, or love. It was about addiction. I’d become addicted to John, to the praise and awe he demonstrated in my presence, to the way his limited, painfully-obvious thoughts elicited epiphanies in my own, to the thrill of sharing my crime-solving habits with someone else. I’d become addicted, and here it was, to _friendship_.

                Perhaps, then, my dreams of burning alive were manifestations of the emotional withdrawals I’d gone through since that damn child was born and John had not time left for me in his life.

                If that was the case, how utterly _dull._

                “Your trousers are too small,” I said.

***

                As it turned out, the burning wasn’t purely in my head. I awoke the next morning with an interesting rash on my hands and feet which, after a quick trip to the internet, I discovered was a symptom of extreme vitamin deficiency.

                “ _Scurvy_ , Sherlock?”

                John glared at me, his left hand in a fist at his side and his right brandishing his phone in my face. He was showing me the text message I’d sent him thirty minutes earlier, a lovely up-close image of a particularly nasty batch of rash on my inner ankle with the caption: _“One step closer to becoming a pirate -SH.”_

                “Among others,” I said carelessly, opening the door wider and whirling back inside. My stomach lurched and leapt with the high of seeing him again, and I had to turn away for fear that I looked too pleased.

                “How. How could you—“ John followed behind me, so angry now that he’d starting taking his typical digestive pauses between words. “ _You—need—to—eat._ How many bloody times do I have to say it, Sherlock? Jesus _Christ_.”

                “There was no one to remind me,” I replied, loftily. I flopped down on the sofa and opened my laptop. “Now, did you hear about this murder in Wembley—“

                John’s hand slammed down on the lid of the computer, and I pulled my fingers back just in time. “You’re not seriously talking about a case right now.”

                “Of course I am,” I said, acting confused (I wasn’t). “Now that you’re here, we may as well not let the visit go to waste.” I moved to open the screen again, but John held it firm.

                “Are you telling me,” he began, now audibly growling, “that you developed scurvy just to get me here for a case?”

                I looked up at his irate expression. No, I hadn’t (purposely) acquired a life-threatening vitamin deficiency to see him again—although it did sound like something I would do. Really, it was the other way round; I’d forgotten to eat most of my meals in the last several months and used the resulting illness to my advantage.

                In typical Sherlockian fashion (and yes, I did just use my own name as an adjective), I ignored his question to keep him guessing. “The body was split exactly in half. _Exactly_ , John.”

                John locked his jaw, stood up straight, and about-faced to the door.

                “Where are you going?”

                He spun back. “If you want to kill yourself, then go right ahead, do it. But don’t expect me to stick around and watch!”

                I rolled my eyes. He could be so dramatic. “I’m not suicidal, for God’s sake. It’s just, eating is so boring. And a waste of time. And anyway,” I continued, pouting a little, “my teeth hurt.”

                John looked as if he might pop all the blood vessels in his forehead. “That’s because _YOU HAVE SCURVY!_ ”

                At this juncture I judged he was angry enough to leave (for a little while anyway, not permanently). However I wasn’t ready to see him go yet, so I said the one thing I knew would make him stay:

                “I’m sorry, John.”

                The apology softened John’s face, like it always did. He was just so predictable. “Sorry,” he repeated. He was trying to maintain his anger, but I could tell it had been downgraded to mere annoyance. He sighed. “Do you even know what you’re sorry for?”

                I searched his face. “For…”

                John raised his eyebrows.

                “For…” I squinted.

                “For going to idiotic lengths of personal danger to see me instead of just picking up the phone like any sane person,” he supplied, darkly.

                “That’s it,” I agreed.

                John shook his head, and the annoyance shifted from the furious kind to the fond one. “Christ,” he invoked the name of that religious icon once more for good measure, and I knew he’d given in. He plopped down on the sofa on top of my feet and glanced at me sideways. “In half, you say?”

                I smirked, wiggling my toes. “Exactly.”

***

                “Well, they were in love,” said John, and then went silent, as if this was an entire proper explanation.

                “A special brand of stupid,” I acknowledged.

                We’d talked about the case for a bit (well, _I’d_ talked, John had offered some barely intelligent and entirely irrelevant opinions, and I had ignored him and talked some more), but somehow the conversation degenerated into a discussion about the most recent Royal family scandal.

                I had known nothing of it until John told me, of course; my brain-space had no use for such trivial gossip the way his clearly did, which I explained to him (for what felt like the thousandth time) when he’d asked me if I’d heard about the Princess So-and-So leaving the Prince Such-and-Such. After I’d done some not-so-effective damage control (“If you think about it, John, it was actually a compliment”—“If I think about it, Sherlock, I’ll punch you in the face”), John had attempted to justify the Princess’s actions by asserting that she had left her husband for her one true love. Apparently she was enamored with another man, whom she’d known since childhood, but being with him would have interfered with her dream to become the next Princess of England, and so she had never allowed her feelings to be shown. Which was incredibly logical and intelligent, in my opinion.

                But then she’d gone and given it all up.

                “I don’t see how this behavior should be championed whatsoever,” I told John. “Especially not by you. Not only did she allow her heart to rule her brain, which as you know is the mark of a world-class idiot, but she left her _husband_. She broke her _vows_. That should get dutiful-John Watson’s blood boiling, shouldn’t it?”

                John looked over at me, his relaxed arms and relaxed legs lying all spread-eagle on the couch, and sighed in a way that suggested he’d given up. “It’s a love story, Sherlock. I mean really. Haven’t you ever been in love? At all? Even when you were young?”

                “Of course I’ve been in love,” I lied. 

                John’s feet twitched, and I could tell he was interested. “Man or woman?”

                “Does it matter?” I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. It seemed that I had fallen into some trap he had laid and I was not pleased about it. At all.

                He didn’t say anything for a moment, but I could tell he was trying to work it out, in that little blank brain of his. “Do you still love them, then?”

                I gave him what I hoped was a highly-disgusted stare. “Do I strike you as the type of person who would pine?”

                John was quiet, and God Almighty, he was actually considering it. “Yes,” he said, finally.

                “Then you’re even more obtuse than I thought!”

                “Well you’re getting pretty bloody defensive about it.” He sighed and sat up a little, arranging his knees closer together. For some reason this put me at ease. “Honestly, it’s okay if you are. You don’t really get over someone you love, do you? I mean, really over? You always kind of love them.” He shrugged. “It’s human nature.”

                “Doesn’t apply to me,” I reminded him. “Sociopath, remember?" (Just because I wasn't one anymore didn't mean I had to tell him.) " _What?_ ”

                John had started chuckling, and he shook his head. “Well, you’re not. A sociopath, I mean.”

                I snorted, to prove I wasn't flustered by his (rare) correct observation. “Are you a psychologist, in addition to a surgeon? When did this happen?”

                “You’re not, Sherlock,” he said, pointedly. “That’s just the excuse you use when you want to be an arsehole.”

                I rolled my eyes. “Oh please, I—“

                “Nevermind that.” He waved his hand in the air. He was really bloody stoic now, completely ignoring my attempts to get him off track. “Tell me about her. Or him.”

                “Who?” I asked, even though I knew perfectly well who.

                “The person you loved. Describe them to me.”

                I couldn’t tell if he didn’t believe me or if he was trying to prove a point by hearing my description. I didn’t like not being able to tell. Especially because either way, it wasn’t good for me.

                “It was a _him_ ,” I said, just to make him uncomfortable. Unfortunately it didn’t seem to work; if anything, John looked immensely satisfied. He was probably congratulating himself for figuring I was gay all along.

 _Way to go, John_ , I thought at him. _A five-year-old could have deduced that._

                “Him, then,” John amended. “Describe him.”

                Buggery fuck, now I was going to have to make up an entire person. “He was…” I searched for some sort of adjective, “… short.”

                For some reason, John sniggered. “And that’s the first thing that comes to mind? How short are we talking?”

                “Erm… averagely so?”

                John grinned. “Ah, okay. So not short, just shorter than _you_. And?” he prompted, before I could retort. “What else?”

                “And…” I searched for something to say. I needed to make it convincing. I couldn’t have John know I was lying, because then he would win... though I had no idea how this had become a competition or what we were competing for. _Sherlock Holmes, what the devil are you trying to prove?_ I asked myself.

                God, if I only knew. Even half the time would be fine.

                The thing was, I hadn’t been in love. Ever. Not even close, not even once. I just didn’t have those feelings for other people. Those warm, fuzzy, head-in-the-clouds feelings that everyone always talks about. I’d never felt “butterflies,” I’d never been nervous around someone because I liked them “like that.” But it occurred to me then that I had felt something close: the giddiness I experienced when John was around. He was the only person I ever looked forward to seeing, and I supposed that was as close to being in love as anything. As close as I was going to get, anyway.

                “He challenged me,” I began. “Not because he was smarter than me—please—but because he never let me get away with anything.”

                “Called you out on your bullshit, did he?” John was looking fond, now. It was wholly grotesque. “Good man. What else?”

                I continued, settling into the lie. “He was always up for anything. You may find this hard to believe, but I was even less restrained in my younger days. I’d wake him up at all hours of the night, for some theory or another, or to go out and do something ridiculous to prove a point. And he’d grumble and gripe but he was always secretly just as excited as I was.”

                John nodded. “You liked to do the same things. Important. Go on.”

                I pushed my tongue between my teeth. This was getting tricky. I was basing the fake person off of John but I didn’t want John to think it was him. He was fairly stupid, but it wouldn’t last forever. “I met him at uni, we were in organic chemistry together. A cliché, I know.” I rolled my eyes, pressing my hands together under my chin. “We were partners for our term project. That’s when it happened.”

                “When you fell in love?”

                “Precisely.”

                John’s face suddenly looked soft. “How did it end?”

                I was startled. Of course, I would have to make up an ending. I ran through a list of general break-up reasons, but none of them seemed believable. “Well,” I said at last, bringing my hands to my lap. “It never really began.”

                John stared at me, and I could hear his breath stall. “What do you mean?”

                “I mean,” I cleared my throat to seem uncomfortable, “we were never _together_ , like that. He wasn’t gay.”

                John’s mouth dropped open. “Jesus, Sherlock. I’m so sorry.”

                “It was fine,” I said quickly. The last thing I wanted was for him to pity me. Especially for fake unrequited love for a fake boyfriend. “We were friends, for a few years. Good friends. And then we graduated, and he took a fellowship in America. We gradually lost touch.” I shrugged.

                “But you loved him,” John insisted. “Wasn’t it absolute agony, not being able to be with him? How did you stand it?”

                “Well,” I began. “I suppose I didn’t know any different.”

                Shit. That was apparently the wrong thing to say, because instead of looking less concerned, John appeared even more so. “That’s so… that’s sad, Sherlock.”

                “Not really,” I countered, feebly. This was going horribly wrong.

                “Didn’t you ever tell him?”

                “Tell him what?”

                “That you loved him!” John was verging on hysterics. “Did you ever say anything _?_ ”

                “No…” He legitimately had me puzzled, now. “What good would it have done?”

                John was sitting fully upright, his chest heaving with breath, and looking at me, bloody scrutinizing, in a way I’d never seen. I was starting to panic. I should have put an end to the conversation when it started.

                “John—“

                It happened simultaneously in slow motion and too quick to comprehend. John reached out and grasped the front of my shirt with both hands and pulled me in toward him, his eyes closed and his face pushing past into my personal space. And then there was no space whatsoever, because his lips were on mine and he was moving them and _oh fucking Christ,_ he was kissing me.

                And I _liked_ it.


	2. The Idea

                I didn’t really like it. Sex, I mean. I’d never really liked anything about it, except maybe the beginning, before it was actually had, the _idea_ of it—the hot breath, smooth skin, muscles tensing. The blissful climax.

                But in reality, it was nothing like the “idea.”

                I remember being thirteen, as every other previously-adolescent human remembers, and thinking about sex as the purest form of ecstasy. All good feelings, good sounds, good smells—nothing bad about it whatsoever. But I’d only thought it was that way because I’d only ever masturbated, and that’s all masturbation was, just pure pleasure with no strings attached.

                But in the real world, there are strings. There are loads of them. In the real world there are uncomfortable backseats to cars, or hard shelving of broom cupboards digging into your spine; there is cold air, sweaty skin that sticks to itself and to others’ and makes the most unappealing noises; there is bad breath, there are teeth, there are… distractions. Too many distractions. It’s not a controlled environment, it’s not predictable, it’s not, _oh_ , _and now I’m going to go slow, and now I’m going to speed up, and now this is going to happen, and now that, and now I’m going to come_. In practice, you have to work at it. It takes work to stay focused. In the real world it’s more like, _okay, think about the sensation in your penis. That’s it. Not about her bony elbow on your thigh. Not about the ingrown hair you are now seeing at a microscopic level on his back. Not about the frigid air and you’d rather be in the bath, alone, than in bed with this lumpy, awkward, smelly bag of flesh that’s supposed to turn you on just because it’s palming your crotch. Focus, focus. God, what did she eat for dinner, dog shit? She must have. No other smell like it. Turn face to side, breathe out mouth. You’ll look like you’re panting with desire, anyway. Cock is flagging, close your eyes, mind palace. Block everything else but the feeling. His mouth is on you now, don’t think about whether or not he’s flossed his teeth, don’t even_ think _about it. You’re supposed to like_ _this. Now like it._

                It was all just too much work. Mentally, physically, I just never could understand how sex was worth it. Granted, I hadn’t had that many partners (and most of them when I was a teenager) but I’d had a few. Both women and men (thought the problem was just women at first—which it was, and then it wasn’t), and I still never liked it. Preferred to be alone, if the need arose. The fantasy was always so much better.

                It wasn’t that I hadn’t been attracted to other people. I did find people—some—mostly men—attractive. I thought their faces were captivating, their eyes, their lips, the way they carried themselves, and of course, their arses. I could get excited for a fit bloke just as well as the next person, but the difference was that I knew better than to act on it. I knew that when I touched them I’d immediately lose interest. So, I studied them from afar instead—memorized their faces, their eyes, their lips, their arses—and committed it all to my mind palace, for later. It helped that I had (nearly) impeccable self control.

                John pulled away from my face and stared at me, deer-in-the-headlights-esque (what, John, didn’t think I’d catch you _kissing me?),_ his fists still full of my (now terribly wrinkled) button-up. We blinked at each other for an indeterminate amount of time, in which I’m sure John was losing (even more, precious) brain cells to the tiny explosions between his synapses, and in which I was trying to understand why the wet, slimy lips and stale coffee breath and rough two-day stubbly chin were not repelling me. In fact, I even… I even wanted to have another _go_. Good _God_.

                “Ungh.” John made a noise like a gurgling drain. Presumably he was trying to speak, though what he was actually doing was sending a pulse of electricity via sound straight to my groin. He cleared his throat. “That.”

                I waited for more words, which never came. _Alright_ , I thought. _So this is where we stand on brain cell count._ I decided I would have to take the conversational lead here (again) (typical). I took a deep breath, and said the first thing that came into my head:

                “Would you mind releasing my shirt?”

                Alright, so, yes, perhaps it wasn’t the most scintillating thing I could have said. But it didn’t seem as if he was going to pull me back towards him quite yet (if ever) (probably never) (did that disappoint me?) (what on _Earth?_ ) and there was no use ruining the shirt any further.

                “Oh.” John looked down and released his grip. “Sorry.” He attempted to smooth out the wrinkles, but a few fruitless tries later and he dropped his hands to his lap instead.

                “You kissed me,” I blurted. Apparently I’d decided to go for a more direct approach this time. _Well done Sherlock. There’s nothing more illuminating than stating the obvious._

                John looked silly with embarrassment. He scratched the back of his head. “Yes?”

                I studied him. His face was round, the nose a bit long, deep wrinkles in his forehead and around his mouth. The eyes were blue and green, slightly different colors from each other, and the lips were most ordinary. I supposed he might have an amiable arse, if he deigned to wear trousers that fit him properly. The point was, I’d never really found him attractive, before. And I still didn’t. Not objectively. He held none of the qualities of any of the men I’d kept in my mind palace (I did a quick scan just to make sure). So why did his kiss affect me so?

                “Why?” I asked.

                John just looked at me, stupidly. As if I was stupid. Which I was, of course—I should’ve known “why.” I was the omniscient Sherlock Holmes, for God’s sake. But I didn’t. All I could think of was that he kissed me, and I liked it. Sentiment, sentiment, sentiment, clogging my neurological pathways, demanding my attentions for non-deductive pursuits. How was I supposed to bloody deduce anything in this state of mind?

                “Because,” John finally spit out, clearly frustrated at my lack of comprehension. “I thought—well. All that about being _short_.” He scratched his head again. I feared he was going to give himself a bald spot. “You were talking about me, weren’t you?”

                Ah. So. He wasn’t quite as thick as I imagined.

                I should have denied it. _No, John, there really was a man in my o-chem class that I loved unrequitedly. I don’t think about_ you _like that. I’m ever so sorry you got that idea._ It would’ve protected my dignity to say that. It would’ve made _him_ feel ridiculous, small. Dumb. Foolish. All the things I was feeling right now. But I _had_ been talking about him, hadn’t I? I’d based my fake love on my relationship with him. Sure, I’d embellished that last bit, about how I wanted him but never said anything because he wasn’t gay, and so what good would it do to let him know if it would only cause trouble? That’s the part that wasn’t real. That’s the part I could deny. It wasn’t true.

                _Wasn’t it?_

                He kissed me, and I liked it.

                _Was it true?_

_Did I want him?_

                (Like that?)

                I stared at him. At his ordinary mouth, on his ordinary face.

                I wanted to kiss him again.

                I wished then that I could have prepared, wished I’d had some sort of warning. But I probably had, for years (I’d think about it later, pick apart every single exchange, every look, every touch, every moment, to see if there were warning signs).

                “There was no man at uni,” I said. My heart was beating hard and fast.

                John nodded, reached out, and took my hand in his. I stared down at them together. His fingers were thick, his grip strong. “Yes,” he said, coaxing me along.

 _There was no man, there was only you._ That’s what he wanted me to say. But my chest was shaking so badly that I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t even breathe. It was suddenly too warm in the flat, too fucking _warm_. I was on fire.

                “Sherlock.” John looked concerned. Bloody well should be; there was something seriously wrong with my pulmonary system. Maybe it was the scurvy. “Sherlock, breathe.” His hands were on my shoulders. I leaned into them and made embarrassing little wheezing noises. “You’re hyperventilating.” _Bravo, John. Astute diagnosis_. “Did you start vitamin C replenishment?”

                I shook my head and attempted a smile. “Thought you’d do that, Doctor.”

                John was not amused. He got up from the sofa and stomped to the refrigerator. “Head between your knees,” he called, and then he was opening cupboards, clunking glasses. I leaned forward until my chest rested on my thighs, and watched the floor moving up and down with my labored breath. Closer—farther—closer—farther—I tried to keep the floor as far away as I could for as long as possible. Deep breaths. Closer… farther… closer… farther… _breathe_. “Here,” said John’s voice. “Sit up.” He set a glass of apple juice into my hands. (Since when did I have apple juice? Must have been Mrs. Hudson, I certainly hadn’t bought it. I hated apple juice.) I took a sip. “We’ll have to get you some orange,” John said.

                “Indeed,” I said, back. I gulped the juice, and closed my eyes. I felt a little better. And then I felt worse, when I thought of what I’d almost said.  What was wrong with me? I didn’t want John, like that. I mean, I did, but I didn’t. Not really. I was nearly forty years old and had never wanted anyone like that, so there was no reason that I should start now. _Just look at all those data points. Look at them. There’s a trend there. You’re not a trained statistician (though smarter than most of them, certainly) but even you can see the trend._

                “Sherlock,” said John, and bent his head to catch my eye. His hair was longer than usual, and a lock fell across his forehead and caught the light.

_The data points, Sherlock!_

                “You....” He looked at me uneasily. “You didn’t just have a panic attack to get out of talking to me, right?”

                That was questionable. “Of course not! That doesn’t sound like me.”

                John raised his eyebrows. “Sherlock,” he said. “You got _scurvy_.”

                I sighed. That wasn’t on purpose, either, but I’d already admitted to it.

                “Look, if you didn’t want to talk about it, then why’d you even bring it up? What was the bloody point of that?” He was starting to get angry now, and a different sort of angry from before. Not the this-is-for-your-own-good angry, that was John around me ninety-nine percent of the time. More like the you-wounded-me-emotionally-and-here-I-thought-we-were-friends angry. The other one percent.

                “I _didn’t_ bring it up,” I said. “You asked me if I’d been in love. And you were so... _adamant._ I had to make up something!”

                “Wait.” John held up a hand. “So that story about uni—that _wasn’t_ about me?”

                I looked down into the dregs of my juice. “Not exactly.”

                John’s eyes widened. “Was it about _anybody?_ ”

                I didn’t know how to explain it. I thought perhaps that the best thing to do would be to start at the beginning. “I started having these dreams, you see—“

                “Bugger the dreams. Answer the damn question.”

                I was starting to see animal shapes in the apple sediment. “I’ve never been in love,” I admitted, with reluctance. Why was I suddenly so ashamed of it? I’d never been ashamed of it before. In fact, it had been a point of pride. I didn’t go in for that sort of thing; it was beneath me. Love was only for weaker, sentimental beings. Not me. Never me.

                But what if....

                Maybe I was ashamed because I did feel something for John? Because I _was_ a weaker, sentimental being? Was this—was it more than just sexual attraction?

                Oh Christ. Oh bloody Jesus Christ.

                “Christ,” said John, and I blinked back from my epiphany. He was running a hand through his hair, and he paced away from me. “Fuck.” He looked absolutely miserable.

                I didn’t understand why _he_ was so upset. Perhaps he was disappointed that I lied to him? “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it this time. I didn’t like to see him like this. Especially because I now had—ugh— _feelings_.

                “I’m such a fucking—“ John rubbed his hand over his forehead, now. He actually looked close to tears. My God. Had I really screwed up that badly?

                I wracked my brains for something to say. There was quite a lot—it was _my_ brain, after all—but none of it seemed promising. Instead I simply sat there, my mouth bubbling like a fish out of water, getting more ashamed by the second.

                Finally, John broke the silence. His voice was hollow when he spoke. “I guess you know everything now.”

                That stopped me. So that was it—he wasn’t upset because I’d made a mess of things, but because he’d expected me to make some sort of deduction about him based on that mess. Something he didn’t want me to deduce. I searched his face, replaying the events in my mind. What had happened? He’d asked me if I loved anyone. I’d made up some story loosely based on our relationship. He’d thought I was talking about him. He’d kissed me.

                “Oh,” I said, as it clicked. “You’re in love with me.”

                I’d been so wrapped up in my own response to John’s kiss that I hadn’t thought about why he’d kissed me in the first place. I felt utterly stupid. But really, who could blame me? It wasn’t really my fault. I’d just had a bloody sexual awakening (and now—cringe—an _emotional_ one) right there in the sitting room. It was understandable that I’d be a bit distracted.

                John laughed, a ridiculous laugh, just one chuckle. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s not funny. I’ve just never heard it said aloud before.”

                I was still trying to process everything. “Actually, you’ve heard it plenty of times,” I said, distractedly. “Just, from everybody else.”

                John laughed again, and then groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Any chance we could just pretend that it didn’t happen?”

                I blinked at him, my head swimming. I could see his features peeking out from between his hands—his eyes, his nose, his lips. I couldn’t stop watching his lips. _You kissed those lips_ , I thought. _That was nice. You rather liked that._ My stomach leapt all the way into my eyeballs, remembering it. I could do it again. Couldn’t I? _He loves you. He wants you to. Again and again and again. Doesn’t he?_

                “Is that what you want?” I asked.

                John looked up through his fingers. He must have seen something alarming in my expression because he dropped his arms to his sides at once. “Isn’t that what _you_ want?”

                I swallowed. I was woefully out of practice with romanticism, but even I knew that if there was ever a time for complete honesty, it was now. “Actually,” I told him, “I want to kiss you again.”

                I registered his blank expression and cursed myself. _Come on, Sherlock. You were fully aware that he didn’t have enough brain cells left to process something like that. What’s the matter with you? Idiot._

                “You,” started John.

                “Yes,” I affirmed.

                John’s eyes gazed upward, as if he’d see what he was supposed to say next floating around in his brain. He looked back at me. His expression still hadn’t changed. “Nope. Still lost. You’re going to have to explain it to me, Sherlock.”

                Explain what? “I thought ‘I want to kiss you again’ was pretty straightforward.”

                “But you just said—you’ve never—that it wasn’t about _me_. What you said, before, the story about uni. It wasn’t about me.”

                I sighed. Did he ever pay attention? “No, what I said was, ‘Not exactly.’”

                “Okay,” said John, attempting patience. “That’s the part I need you to explain.”

                I felt a bit prickly. Hadn’t I explained my emotions enough, for one day? I didn’t even fully understand them yet, myself. “Can’t we just kiss? Actions are louder than words, you know.”

                I fully expected John to explode, then. But, to my astonishment, his mouth turned up at the corners instead. “Well, I’m going to need a few words first.”

                “Fine,” I sighed, then stopped.

 _First_ , he’d said. First. As in, before second. And second, in this scenario, was more kissing.

                I gaped at him. “First?” I repeated.

                His smile grew.

                I felt the giddiness bubbling up again—but now that I was paying attention, there was indeed something else. More than just caffeine. Something I couldn’t compare to any drug I’d ever tried. And whatever it was, it made me forget myself just enough to try and name it.

                “John.” I looked into his eyes. “I’m in love with you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gotta get through some feels before getting to... other things. But I promise, smut is on the way!


	3. A Valuable Lesson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go...

                I’d once told a woman I loved her.

                Well, more a girl than a woman. We were sixteen, she was in my year in school and the only girl that had been remotely interested in an overly-curious gangly know-it-all (yes, ladies and gentlemen, there was a time when I did not look like an Adonis). It was the phase of my life when I’d started to become curious about sexual experimentation with a partner. From ages thirteen to sixteen I’d learned everything I needed to know about masturbation, and I was bored. Horny, and bored. It was a truly awful combination.

                She’d spoken to me a few times in our classes. She was reasonably, objectively attractive, not incredibly intelligent but not stupid enough to be a turn-off. I wasn’t particularly attracted to her but at the time I didn’t know what it really meant to be attracted to someone. I thought things would just... _happen_ , when the time came.

                I’d had just enough social etiquette to ask her to ice cream before propositioning her. I’d read that chocolate was an aphrodisiac so I’d ordered it for her and watched her eat it, every last bit. And as soon as she was done, I’d asked her whether she cared to become intimate in the backseat of my mother’s car.

                I can still remember how wide her eyes had gone. A bit buggy, actually, which quite irked me as it would only serve to make getting turned on by her more difficult. “I don’t think so,” she’d said.

                “And why not?” I’d demanded. (I’d paid for her ice cream and _everything_.)

                “Because, you know, it’s just...”

                She looked incredibly uncomfortable, and I was growing more and more perturbed by the second. “Just what?”

                “I... I only want to do it with someone who loves me,” she’d said finally.

                Reflecting back on it, she was clearly trying to come up with an outrageous condition that would have no danger of becoming a reality. In her mind, sixteen year old boys were either scared of love, or they would only really say it if they meant it. Which, by the way, clearly illustrates the ignorance of teenage girls regarding teenage boys. Because, like any _actual_ sixteen year old boy, I was going to say whatever she wanted to hear to get off.

                “Oh! Well, of course I love you.”

                Her jaw literally dropped. She stood up in a rage. “Are you mad? You don’t love me! You don’t even know me! I can’t believe you would just say that. You can’t go around just saying that!” By the time she started throwing about words like “pig” and “creep,” I decided to judge the whole endeavor a failure—and not only that, more trouble than it was worth. I drove her home in extremely irritated silence and we never spoke again. I suppose the only good thing that came from it was that she learned at an early age a valuable lesson regarding the lengths a sexually charged male will go to, to sleep with her. I’d like to think it saved her from many mistakes she otherwise would have made later on in her life.

                So, why is this relevant to the heretofore events of my proclaiming my love for a one Dr. John Hamish Watson?

                Well. _Apparently_ , at some point in his life, John had been a naïve teenage girl.

                “No, you don’t,” he said to me, his smile dropping away abruptly.

                I was having major flashbacks to the ice cream shop. “I do, actually.”

                “You just said you’ve never loved _anyone_!”

                I sighed. “Yes, I know,” I conceded, “but I was... mistaken.”

                “Mistaken?” John repeated, and then crossed his arms. “It’s one thing if you want to kiss me, Sherlock. It’s quite another if you’re in love.”

                I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

                “You don’t know?”

                “I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone before!” Which wasn’t completely true; I just had never wanted to kiss someone a second time, after I’d already done it once.

                John stared at me. “You think that because you want to kiss me, that means you love me?”

                “No! No. It’s more than that. It’s just... I’ve never... I don’t think I can... feel, that way, about someone, if I’m not... feeling... other things.”

                John raised his eyebrows. “Was that honestly supposed to be coherent?”

                “No,” I muttered.

                “Want to try again?”

                I sighed. I needed to figure out how to do this—how to prove I knew it was love. Because as the seconds ticked by, I was more and more sure. Things were making sense now, things that hadn’t before: My desire to sabotage his previous relationships. My inability to focus on the Work. My clear _preference_ for John over the Work.

                And kissing him, and liking it. That had never happened before. What I had been trying to tell him, so ineloquently, was that I thought I might need to be in love to enjoy physical intimacy. The two, for me, seemed to be inextricably linked; I couldn’t take pleasure in the second without having the first. But as John was clearly not wired that way, so he would have a difficult time understanding.

                What I needed to do was convince him of my feelings, separate from my physical desires. In short, to put five years of subconscious emotion into perfect words. No problem, right?

                “How does it feel?” I asked, at last. “When you’re in love.”

                John looked a little unsure. “Well, it—“

                “Does it feel like a drug?” I interrupted, on purpose. “Like you can’t wait for the next hit? Does it thrill you, to your very core, just thinking about it? Does it make you want to give up everything you’ve ever done, everything you’ve ever wanted, everything you ever were, just to have it again?” I loomed over him, at some point having crossed the room.

                John looked up at me, speechless.

                “Because that’s how it feels,” I told him. “Even before you kissed me, that’s how it felt. I didn’t know it was love, until now. And maybe it’s not, still. You tell me. You tell me, John. What is that called? When you feel that way? What is it?” I was getting a little hysterical.

                “Sherlock,” was his only reply.

                And then he was kissing me. Kissing me and kissing me, his hands on my face, his tongue between my lips. I could feel him exhale his breath into my mouth. (His own breath. From his lungs. Into. My. Mouth.) If it were anyone else, I would have gagged. With John, it was the loveliest thing I had ever felt.

                He pulled away abruptly, and the room spun. If it wasn’t for the scurvy, I’d have thought I was having a swoon.

                “Sherlock.” His voice sounded thin and full at the same time. “You really... God, you really do.”

                “Yes,” I replied, breathlessly.

                “You love me.”

                “Yes.”

                He went back in like a starving man. His hands in my hair, on my shoulders, gripping my shirt once more. I didn’t care this time, about the wrinkles. I clutched at the fabric of his sleeves, trying to anchor myself somehow.

                He pulled back again. His lips were wet and pink and had gone crooked from the pressure of my own on them. “I’ve wanted... Sherlock.” His thumbs were hooked under my shirt, rubbing circles on my clavicle. He watched them, seemingly mesmerized. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”

                “You have?” I didn’t even recognize my own voice. It was thick and... and it croaked, like a... frog? Yes. A frog voice. Fuck. My metaphors were degenerating rapidly.

                “You remember when you made me give you my phone?”

                I blinked, trying to retrieve the memory—it was much more difficult than it should have been. “At Bart’s?” I asked, finally. “The day we met?” Impossible. It couldn’t have been then, that was before I even knew him, or felt anything that would have impeded my objective observation. I would have seen right away if he was interested in me.

                “No, after.” John leaned forward, pressing his face into my neck. “After Mycroft kidnapped me. I came back to the flat. You’d texted me for an emergency.” His lips were moving on my skin, hot and damp. My eyelids fluttered uncontrollably. “You were lying on the sofa, you wanted my phone to send a text. You remember? To the cabbie.”

                I could barely think, but the memory resurfaced anyway; I had been lying on the sofa, with three nicotine patches on my forearm. John hadn’t come back to the flat yet, which meant that either he’d had second thoughts about being my flatmate or that my brother had got to him. I’d heavily favored the latter. _Would it scare him off?_ I’d wondered. He hadn’t seemed the type to be intimidated easily, but then again, Mycroft _was_ the British government.

                I’d texted him to find out. I didn’t have a plan, just sent him something ambiguous and intriguing to see if he would take the bait. And he had, so I’d had to make up something. I was planning on texting the victim’s phone anyway. so I borrowed his to do it.

                It became a sort of game I played with him, after. I’d test him to see just how far he would go for me. He’d done all sorts of ridiculous things, but I hadn’t known it was because he loved me. Admiration, hero worship, even friendship. But not love. Love had never crossed my mind.

                “You held out your hand for it,” John was still talking, remembering with me. “Your eyes weren’t even open. Like you knew I would do it.” He nuzzled the space where my neck and shoulder met. “Like you owned me.” He breathed in, and I realized, he was _smelling_ me.

                “John,” I said, sounding more like a frog being strangled, now.

                “And I did it,” said John, ignoring me. His hands were sliding down my chest. “Because you did. Because you do.” They slid down.

                “J—John.” My voice wavered.

                It had never been like this, never, not with anyone. My speech was stuttered. My thoughts were verging on incoherency. I felt that whatever John did now, whatever he said, I wouldn’t be in control of my responses. I didn’t particularly like not being in control. In fact, it was fucking frightening. But I didn’t want to stop.

                John backed away. Only a few inches, but I nearly fell forward as my body followed his. I pulled him to me again with the grip I still held on his sleeves, and he made a soft sound in his throat, almost a whine. “Sherlock,” he choked. “Are—are you—oh—“

                I’d started to kiss his neck. When I reached his pulse point, I felt him collapse against me and press his hips forward, breathing hard.

                He maneuvered his head around to look me in the eye. “Are you okay? With this, I mean. With...” He swallowed. His hands were moving over my chest, the spots where his fingertips touched tingling with electricity on my skin. Even through my shirt.

                “I,” I began, shakily.

                “Please say you’re okay,” said John, nearly whispering it. He leaned closer and our foreheads touched.

                “Yes,” I managed, because I was utterly incapable of saying no.

                “Sherlock, if you—”

                “Yes, John.”

                “Thank God.”

                And then, right there in the sitting room, John smoothed a hand over the front of my trousers.

                I gasped. Legitimately gasped, and the world went dark for a second. I realized after the fact that it was because I’d closed my eyes. _So this is what it’s supposed to feel like_ , I thought, wildly. _This is what I’ve been missing._

                “Come on.” John took one of my elbows in his hand as he made his way back toward my bedroom. Once we were there, he turned the lock on the door. It clicked, and he looked up at me. And I realized: this was a moment that would change things. Between us, between everything else in our lives. Every _one_ else.  

                Oh _, bugger._

                Mary. The baby.

                John was acting like he hadn’t even thought about them. In truth, I hadn’t thought about them until just then—but he must have. He was “Dutiful” John Watson, to use the epithet I’d bestowed on him earlier that day. It wouldn’t be like him to forget them. Not in this moment, especially.

                He came close and started kissing me again, cradling my face in his hands. His fingers curled back behind my neck, the tips just barely tangled in my hair. He kissed with desperation, with his mouth open and sweet. He kissed like a soldier, gone away for months.

                (What was this rubbish I was thinking?)

                He’d definitely thought of them, of Mary, he had to have, and he was still kissing me. He was still in my room, with the door locked, kissing me and running his hands down my body. He wanted me more than her. He wanted me, he had since the beginning. He’d do anything for me. Still. He was still mine.

                “I thought,” I said, as he kissed my neck. My breath caught in my chest. “I thought I’d lost you.”

                John stopped and looked up at me. He put his hands on either side of my face again, except this time, he was doing it to lock our eyes. “I know,” he said, forcefully. “But you didn’t. You couldn’t.”

                I dug my fingers into his hips. I hadn’t even realized I was holding him there.

                We kissed again, and my arms pulled him close. As close as I could. I suddenly couldn’t get close enough. “John.”

                He kissed all over my face, my cheeks, my eyes, my chin. I rolled my hips forward, almost involuntarily. I was so hard it was painful, and the contact sent a thrill of pleasure all the way to the tips of my extremities.

                Burning. On fire.

                “I need—“ I groaned. “John, I need—”

                “Yes,” John hissed, and reached down to undo my belt. He fumbled with it and it jangled as he got it open and out of the way. He undid my flies, and then his hand was navigating the elastic waistband of my pants, and then—

                Oh, God.

                “Oh,” I exhaled, as his hand made contact with my skin. I curled forward, over him, my head lolling over his shoulder. I turned my face to his neck as he stroked upward. “Oh.”

                “Yes,” John said again. His mouth was right by my ear, he spoke very softly into it. His voice sounded like sex. And the jingling of the belt, hitting his body as I thrust my hips toward him, the rustling of our shirts, and trousers, the breathing, mine and his both. It all sounded like sex. A sex symphony. (Ugh. See what I mean about the metaphors?)

                Arousal began to pool in my abdomen. It built and built, until my entire body was trembling with want. It just felt so bloody _good_ , and I couldn’t stop it. I thought of how many times I’d had to force myself to try and get this far with other people, but I had never managed it. I’d never got this close. But I was getting close, now. I’d never orgasmed in front of anyone else before, but oh, Christ in heaven, I was going to with John. I was going to, into his hand, in the dim light of my bedroom, with him whispering encouragement into my ear, with him kissing my neck. His lips, _God_ , his lips, and his _hand_ , oh my _God._

                “Tell—tell me again,” I panted.

                His breath, hot, on my ear. “Tell you what?”

                “That—oh—that you love me.”

                John paused, then wrapped his free hand round the small of my back, splaying his palm out flat. He pressed forward, so that I got even closer to him, and his other hand tighten its grip. “I love you, Sherlock,” he murmured. My skin under his fist began making obscene noises as he moved faster. “I love you, more than anything. I’ll never stop.”

                “ _John_ ,” I said, and came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...to be continued...
> 
> To those of you subscribed, thanks for your patience while I wrote and rewrote (and rewrote) this chapter!!! Going to try to post the next one in a week... fingers crossed it'll be ready. <3


	4. A New Drug

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little short, so I thought I'd post two today! Enjoy!

                I came, pumping gracelessly into John’s hand, with the suspicion that I might have made an undignified sound or two in the process. It was hard to keep track of.

                “Shhh,” John soothed, his mouth still on my ear. “Shhh, that’s good. That’s so good, I’ve got you.” I started to come back down and realized that my loud breathing sounded a lot like whimpering. If I sounded like that as I calmed, I must have made some terribly needy sounds during. The way he was talking to me would definitely support that theory.

                I peeled myself off of John’s shoulder and stood back on my own feet, not realizing until that moment how much of my weight he had been supporting. I looked down in awe at the sight of my semen spattered on his shirt, and then again as he took his hand and squeezed his own erection through his trousers.

                “Bloody hell, Sherlock,” he panted. “That was so bloody hot.” He raked up his shirt and undid his button and zip.

                “Wait,” I said, dazed, somehow managing to remember my manners even in my first-ever third-party-assisted post-coital haze. “Wait. Let me.”

                John’s hand was already moving under his pants, but it stilled as soon as I spoke. I closed the distance between us again and reached forward so that my fingertips brushed the soft skin of his belly. “Ah,” John exhaled, and closed his eyes. I watched him in rapt fascination as I unfurled my hand on his abdomen and slowly slid it downward to the damp heat of his cock. He withdrew his hand from his pants, giving me all the control, and I wrapped my fingers around him and pulled up. He threw his head back and groaned, wordlessly.

                I felt as if I was in a dream. My body felt limp and groggy, my head so light that it could have floated away. This couldn’t be real. This wasn’t John Watson, it wasn’t a way I’d ever seen him before. I couldn’t be making him feel like this. But here he was, feeling it like it was the most familiar thing in the world. _He must have had loads fantasies_ , I thought. _He must have._ He said he’d loved me for years. Almost since the beginning.

                I suddenly felt unsettled. _Years_. He’d loved me for years, and I’d loved him for five minutes.

                What did that mean? To want someone like this, for _years?_

 _You did too, Sherlock_ , I tried to reason. _You did, you just didn’t know it._

                I pulled on him again and tried to stop thinking. He gripped my shoulder and squared his hips. “God,” he gasped, and looked at me. His eyes were dark, his eyelids heavy, and his lips were flushed, his cheeks, his neck. “You.”

                “Yes,” I told him, not because I knew what he meant but because I didn’t want him to stop talking. It was a good distraction.

                “You’re so... ah.... oh—oh my God—“ His fingers tightened on my arm. They were going to leave bruises, evidence that would last days afterward. “Just like that, yeah, and twist—twist at the top—“ I twisted his foreskin over the head of his cock, ever so slightly, and John moaned. His legs began to shake. “Yeah, ah, oh, Sherlock, I’m gonna—I’m—oh, Sherl—“ His speech dissolved into incoherencies and my hand suddenly slid smooth and slippery over his spasms.

                He swayed in place after it was over, panting, his eyes screwed tightly shut. I watched him, unsure of what to do. Suddenly they flew open, and there we were, just me, and him, staring at each other, splattered with come, my hand still holding his now-shrinking cock. It was almost comical.

                “You can let go now,” said John finally, looking down.

                “Ah, sorry.” I dropped him and clenched my fingers into a fist and back, feeling the stickiness left over.

                He swallowed. “I think I need to sit down.”

                We went over to the bed and sat down on the edge. Both our trousers were still undone, and John, at least, was still breathing a little roughly. I heard his breath hitch more than once as he tried to start speaking but then stopped himself.

                “Do you want to wash up?” he asked, finally.

                That was what he decided on? “That would be nice.”

                We both stood and headed for the loo. It wasn’t until I was watching him wash his hands and waiting for my turn that I realized I could have gone to the kitchen sink instead. I had just sort of followed him. Perhaps I was feeling an unconscious desire to be close to him. That was good, right? That’s what I was supposed to feel. Right?

                John finished and stepped aside, leaving the water running for me. I put my hands under and rinsed off, then got some soap and started washing.

                “You missed a spot,” he said, from my side.

                I was about to be offended that he was inspecting my hand washing technique (I could do _some_ things myself!) until he reached in to wash it off for me. It was a spot on my wrist, just below my palm, and he grasped my hand and turned it over and thumbed the spot under the running water. My hand tingled where he touched it.

                John continued rubbing my wrist long after it was clean. “Are you trying to hold my hand?” I asked, eventually.

                He smiled a little. “Maybe.”

                I looked down at him, next to me, smiling at our hands joined in the sink. He caught me watching him, and he rocked up onto the balls of his feet to kiss my lips. It was quick, and chaste, and left my head full of fluff instead of brains. (Thank God, I needed a bit of respite from thinking.)

                He turned off the taps and we took turns toweling our hands. “So,” I said, when we were done. “You probably want to talk.” Actually, _I_ wanted to talk, to understand what the hell had just happened, but I didn’t want him to know I was that insecure. Or stupid. John hung the towel back up on the holder and didn’t say anything for a moment. He smoothed the wrinkles in it so that it lay perfectly creased and flat.

                “Do you still love me?” he finally asked.

                I blinked at him. He turned round when I didn’t respond.

                “Don’t be an idiot,” I told him. Of course I still loved him. Why would he think I wouldn’t? Just because I was uncomfortable, and confused, and had never loved anyone before.... John’s mouth settled into a thin line, which is how he looked when he didn’t know if I was being rude or fond. “Of course I still love you,” I clarified, with more determination than I felt.

                He visibly relaxed, and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know how you can blame me. You call everyone an idiot, whether you’re in love with them or not.” He smiled a little.

                “Right,” I said. I looked around the room. “Now what?”

                John sighed. “Honestly, I dunno....” His eyes suddenly twinkled. “More sex?”

                I was caught off guard. This whole situation, everything, it was just so brand-fucking new. I was so lost. “Erm... I don’t...”

                He laughed. “I’m kidding, Sherlock. I can’t either. Maybe in an hour.” He stepped forward and slid his hands up my arms again. Almost against my will, I relaxed into his touch. I stared at his mouth, at the way he was looking at me, and my worries dissipated into thin air. I just wanted him to kiss me. He was leaning in to do just that, when his phone rang.

                He backed up and fished it out of his pocket. When he saw the name on the screen, his face fell, and I knew immediately who it was. “Hey,” he said, answering the call. He listened for a moment. “Is she running a fever?” Silence again. “Okay.” His face was long. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up and looked at me.

                “Go,” I said, feeling very strange.

                “I’m sorry,” said John, apologetically. “It’s Anna, she—“

                “It’s fine. Go, it’s fine.” I smiled, trying to put him at ease. I suddenly wanted nothing more than for him to get out of the flat.

                “I’ll come over tomorrow, okay?” John promised, zipping up his trousers. “On my lunch break. We’ll talk about... we’ll talk. Okay?”

                “Yes. Fine.”

                “Sherlock. Look at me.” He suddenly grasped my face in his hands. “It’s not going to be like this. I promise you.”

                 “I—I know,” I said, even though I didn’t. I didn’t know how I wanted it to be. He was married. He had a child. He had loved me for years.

                He kissed me, long and hard. When we broke apart, I was feeling too many emotions to understand any of them. He left the loo and grabbed his jacket from the kitchen table.

                “Eat some oranges,” he instructed, on his way out the door.

***

                After John had left, I’d made a plan for the next day. I would sit down with him, like a normal human being, and have a discussion about what we were supposed to do now. I’d never had a relationship before, and I wasn’t sure I would be good at it. I wasn’t even sure what it would look like, if it could work, in the conventional way that relationships worked. But we needed to talk about it. We needed to, or otherwise things would just go unsaid, and fester, the way they had previously. When John had supposedly loved me. For years.

                But by the time he showed up, all plans of talking had fallen to the wayside. Seeing him again, it was like... like breathing in oxygen, after being underwater for much too long. I tackled him to the sofa, and we practically ripped each other’s clothes off. And I noticed things I hadn’t consciously before—the way he smelled, for instance. It was wholly intoxicating. A new drug, all on its own. I buried my face in his neck and breathed him in, rolling my hips sinfully. I could feel him hard against me, and I loved it, I loved it. I loved him, more than ever. I thought I might be going crazy.

                We didn’t talk at all.


	5. Twelve-Thirty

                Four days passed. I didn’t answer my phone (three texts from Lestrade, three from Mycroft, one missed call from Mother). I didn’t do any experiments. I never even left the flat. I simply waited, waited for John to come back for “lunch” every day, and then again when his shift at the surgery was finally through. I waited in my dressing gown with unkempt hair and a fluctuating erection, for hours, unable to think of anything but John’s eyes, John’s lips, John’s neck, John’s hands, John’s cock. I waited, lying on the sofa, or in my bed, or in the bath, trapped in my mind palace, where it had seemed I’d pushed out anything that didn’t have to do with sex with John.

                (Including the conversation that we still hadn’t had.)

                If I was obsessive about things before, it was nothing compared to now. By the time he arrived I would be in complete agony, so keyed up that all I needed was for him to brush up against me, for one or two quick strokes of his hand down my pants. I couldn’t sleep (and believe me, I wanted to, after all the physical activity). I wasn’t hungry (John had already had to use sex as a bargaining chip for me to eat a proper meal). Nothing else in the world mattered, nothing at all. It was terrible and wonderful all at once.

                After four days of this I asked John if there wasn’t something wrong with me. I asked him whilst curled up around him, naked, in my bed, after we’d just both got off with our cocks slotted together in his hand. “John,” I said. My words were muffled in his shoulder. “I think I may be ill.”

                “We took care of the scurvy,” he replied, sleepily.

                “Yes, but this is different.”

                He stroked my hair. “What are your symptoms?”

                “Can’t sleep. No appetite. Obsessive thoughts.”

                “Sounds like you’ve been sick all your life,” he chuckled.

                “Obsessive thoughts about _you_. As in, no room for anything else. For example, this morning, I went to brush my teeth four separate times because kept forgetting why I was in the loo. And then I forgot to put toothpaste on! I cannot function, John. This is a real problem.”

                “Ah,” John said. “Yeah, it actually does sound like you’re sick.”

                “It does?” I lifted my head to look at him. His eyes were closed. He looked half asleep. “What do I have?” I couldn’t believe he was being so casual about it.

                “It’s a serious ailment.” He began to smile, and I was getting more and more skeptical by the second.

                “Oh?”

                “Yes. I believe the medical term is ‘lovesick.’”

                I scowled and made a sound of protest in the back of my throat. “Please. This can’t be how everyone in love feels!”

                John chuckled again, low and deep in his chest, and I hated him—but also, I laid my head back down onto it to feel the vibrations. _This is how it feels when John laughs at me_ , I thought. “I assure you, it is,” he said.

                “Impossible.” Now I could hear his stomach digesting whatever he’d last eaten. Next to John’s laugh, it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. “Society would cease to function.”

                “Well, maybe it’s not exactly to the same degree. You’ve always done things in extremes.”

                “This is more than extreme. Do you know what I’m doing right now? I’m cataloging the gurgling in your stomach. _Because I like the sound_.”

                John opened one eye and looked at me. “I don’t blame you. My digestive noises are hot.” He was grinning.

                “John!” I scrambled off him and stood up.

                “Okay, okay. Hey. Sherlock.”

                I was hunting around the floor for my dressing gown, so I could get out of there. “What.”

                “It will get better, you know. It fades away.”

                I stopped searching and looked at him. “Completely?”

                “Well, no... not if it’s right. But it gets more... manageable.”

                I frowned at him. “It’s already got manageable for you. You went to the surgery.”

                John sat up and pulled me to him. “Yeah, I went, but I thought about you the whole time.” He stroked his hands over my bum. I pretended not to be interested.

                “No you didn’t,” I said, trying to look anywhere but at him.

                “Oh yes I did. I got an erection examining some old lady’s rotten toenails.”

                I snorted. “You’re taking the piss.”

                “I’m not!” He was kissing my stomach. “She thought I had a foot fetish.”

                “You’re a rubbish liar.” I was getting hard again, what with his mouth so close to my crotch.

                “Hmmm,” John hummed. “Do you want to know what I was thinking about?” He reached up to stroke my thigh.

                “You were thinking about vomiting at the smell of her feet.”

                “Nuh uh,” said John. “Guess again.” He slid off the bed and onto his knees in front of me.

                “You were...” I was getting distracted. “You were...”

                “Yes?” He looked up at me, through his long eyelashes. The image of his face there, right next to my penis, finished the job of hardening it up.

                I swallowed. “You were thinking about me.”

                “What about you?” he coaxed.

                “About my cock.” My voice had dropped half an octave.

                “Mmmmm.” John closed his eyes. “I love it when you say ‘cock.’”

                “Cock.”

                He smiled and looked at me again. “Tell me what you want me to do with it.”

                So, I suppose now’s a good time to mention, that John was a genius when it came to dirty talk.

                “I want you to... suck it.” It was a phrase I had learned from him. I’d always found that sort of talk too vulgar to be arousing, but with John... well. Things were different with John. He’d used it, earlier in the week, and I’d had a... let’s just say, a _profound_ reaction.

                John’s pupils blew wide, and he let out a shaky breath. “God. Say that again.”

                I threaded my fingers through the hair on the crown of his head. “I want you to suck me.”

                John slid his hand further up my inner thigh and lightly caressed my bollocks. “Sherlock Holmes wants me to suck him,” he said, not quite to me. I made an involuntary thrust forward. “How badly do you want it?”

                “I—”

                “Badly enough for me to make you eat a salad for dinner first?” He raised an eyebrow.

                I groaned. “You wouldn’t.”

                “No,” John agreed. “I wouldn’t.”

                And then he swallowed me down.

                “Jesus,” I swore, as he used his tongue. “Jesus bloody _Christ_.” Did I mention that John was also a genius at oral sex?

                “I love it when you curse,” he said, and then went back to it.

                “Fucking Christ,” I continued, because he liked it.

                John moaned around my cock and shifted on his knees. I could tell he was getting turned on too.

                “I want to suck you too,” I said to him, softly.

                He twitched and ran a hand over his own crotch. I firmed my grip on the back of his head, beginning to breathe loudly. I loved watching him touch himself, especially when it was in response to something I said. Like he just couldn’t control it.

                Suddenly, he stopped sucking and leaned back on his heels. “John?”

                “I want you to do something different to me,” was his reply.

                I faltered for a second. “What—you—you don’t like my mouth?”

                John’s gazed was heated, and electric. “Of course I like it. But I want to try something else. If you want to.”

                I stared down at him. “What?”

                John stood up. His prick stuck straight out from his body, at attention. He slid a hand around to the small of my back, and leaned his face next to my ear. “I want you to fuck me,” he whispered, and clamped his hand down on my cock.

                “Oh,” I gasped, from the words and from the touch.

                “I want to feel you inside me.” He stroked. “Please.”

                I responded with even louder breathing.

                “Please. I just want to be close to you. Closer than I’ve ever been with anyone. God, Sherlock, please.” His dirty talk was becoming more sentimental. And God help me, that was even hotter.

                “Yes,” I rasped. “Yes.”

                He backed up toward the bed, sat and lay down. “There’s some lube,” he said, “in the drawer.”

                “Since when?”

                “Since I put it in there a couple hours ago.”

                I climbed over him and reached for the bedside table. Inside the drawer was a little tube, just like he’d said. “You’re tricky,” I told him, sitting back and settling between his legs.

                “I like to be prepared.” He stared at my hands. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

 _Are you?_ I wanted to say _. Mr. I’m Not Gay?_ But I didn’t. John clearly had no inhibitions when it came to having sex with me, even though I was a man. I’d have to ask him about it sometime. Sometime, when we actually had a civilized conversation about this whole thing. Which was not going to be right now.

                “Yes.” I uncapped the lube and squirted some onto my fingers. It was a little cold, but it heated quickly on my hand. I moved down between his legs, which were spread wide on the bed with his knees upright.

                “Wait—“ he began, and licked his lips. “Can you suck me a little first?”

                I looked up at him. There was a crease of concern between his eyebrows. “John, are you okay with—“

                “Yes,” he interrupted me. “It’s just... I...”

                “You’ve never done this before,” I finished for him. I sat back again.

                “I want to,” said John. He reached for me. “You don’t know how much I want to.”

                I let him pull me forward until I was lying on top of him. My hips squirmed on his, and he thrust upward at the contact. I leaned forward and kissed him, and kissed him, with my tongue lapping languidly at his lips. He groaned and rocked against me in a rhythm. I felt his cock getting hard again.

                “Your fingers,” he breathed. “You can use your fingers, now.”

                I nodded and propped myself up on one elbow, then reached down underneath his bollocks. (Long arms were a major benefit in this situation.) It was warm, and I felt soft hairs on my fingertips as I searched for the pucker of his opening. I found it, and pressed gently, not trying to go inside yet.

                John thrust his hips up again. “Your mouth. Please.”

                I shuffled down between his legs again, and used my free hand to steady his cock. I sank my mouth down onto it and pressed a little more firmly at his areshole.

                “Oh,” said John. “Oh, yeah.” I pressed harder. “Do it. God.”

                I pushed a finger inside him.

                His breath shook. He reached down and steadied a hand on my shoulder. “Good. That’s good. That’s—“

                I curled my finger, and found his prostate.

                “Fuck!” he shouted, and his whole body bowed up. “Oh my God. Oh, Fuck. _Sherlock._ ”

                “Mmmmm,” I replied, my mouth still on him.

                “Do that again. Christ, please—“

                I pushed a second finger inside.

                “Ahhhh,” John moaned, and if I hadn’t just come twenty minutes earlier, I would have done then without even touching myself. My cock spasmed and I groaned around John’s, badly needing more. More contact, more sounds from John, more of him—

                “Sherlock.” He gripped my shoulder and I looked up. There was something raw in his expression. Something had broken open, some vulnerability that I had unlocked. I felt dizzy with desire. “I want you,” he whispered.

                The way he was looking at me. The way he was _looking_.

                I slid my mouth off his cock. “Okay. Okay.” I pulled my fingers out of him, and fumbled around the mattress, looking for the lube. I found it and slicked some on myself.

                “You’re so bloody gorgeous,” John said, as I got into position below him.

                “John.” My mouth was thick and hot.

                “Go on. Go on, Sherlock. Please, I want you to.” He lifted his hips off the bed.

                “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, but I was already lining myself up properly.

                “You won’t. You won’t. Just please. Please get it in.” His voice was so desperate. I’d never heard him like this.

                I swallowed, and slowly pushed forward.

                “Ah,” John gasped. His breath caught, over and over, and he closed his eyes tightly.

                “Are you okay?” He didn’t respond. “John, talk to me, are you?”

                “Keep going,” he said, sounding strangled.

                I stalled instead.

                “It’s okay,” he said to me, even though I should have probably been the one reassuring _him_. “Go ahead.”

                I pushed in again, more and more, until my hips were flush with his arse. Then I stopped moving completely. “Tell me when you’re alright,” I managed. I knew how it could be, I’d done this once before, it was painful until you got used to it, and it felt almost... unnatural, something going in where things went out, being full where it shouldn’t be full. He needed time to adjust, but I was starting to shake. I didn’t know it was possible to be this aroused without climaxing. John’s body was just so warm, and squeezing around me in the most decadent way. I knew I wasn’t going to last long, when I started moving. Hell, if he did so much as clench his arse, I’d probably reach the point of no return. My breath began to shiver with my body.

                Finally, John opened his eyes. “Okay. You can move.”

                I did, as gently as I could. I didn’t really pull in and out, I more of just rocked myself over him. It was subtle. I was still afraid of hurting him.

                “More,” John said, and I pushed in and out a little, this time. “Ah,” he moaned. “More. Move a little bit to the—yeah—“ I shifted, and then John was crying out. “Oh yeah, oh yeah, right there, fuck, fuck, oh Sherlock, fuck me, _fuck_ —“

                I couldn’t hold on anymore. I was going to come, and then John reached down to tug at himself, and I couldn’t, I just couldn’t comprehend how good it was, and I was coming, and coming, shouting things, I don’t even know what.

                It seemed like I came forever, the longest orgasm of all time, probably. It was probably unhealthy, how much I came. I came until I couldn’t even hold myself up anymore, and collapsed on top of him, my cock going soft inside him. I could feel his heart beating like a hummingbird’s, hard and fast through his chest. And then he rutted against my stomach, and I realized, he still hadn’t got off.

                I wanted to help him but I couldn’t bloody move. All I could do was breathe and shift to the side, so that he had more space to move his hand. My eyes were shut but I could feel him jerking himself, his hand milking his cock under my stomach. He shivered and shook beneath me, soft moans over my head, and then he finally groaned and spilled between us. “I love you,” he whispered into my hair. “I love you.”

***

                We fell asleep together after that. For a few hours anyway, until John shifted and it woke me, and I looked at the time on the clock. “John.” I shook him, and he grunted. “John, it’s twelve-thirty.” I sat up and switched on the lamp.

                “S’happening?” John slurred.

                “It’s past midnight,” I said in a harsh whisper. Though I wasn’t sure why I was whispering. Maybe I thought Mrs. Hudson might hear us? (Like she hadn’t heard us having sex hours ago.) “You need to leave.”

                John sat up, rubbing his head. I threw his clothes at him from across the room, as I found them lying about. “Right,” he said. “Okay.” He started to put on his socks. He didn’t seem too concerned with the time—perhaps he’d given Mary some excuse of why he’d be home late. But twelve-thirty? What excuse could he have possibly made for that?

                He finally had his trousers up, and his shirt was mostly buttoned. I grabbed his shoes for him and shoved them into his hands, then steered him out of the bedroom.

                “Good luck,” I said, and pushed him out the front door.

                I shut it and spun around, leaning back against it with my hand still on the handle. There was no way he could get out of this. How could he get out of this? Mary wasn’t stupid, she was actually bloody fucking smart, smarter than a lot of people. I started to panic. She was going to find out, and then—

                —and then I would be _responsible_ , and this thing, it might actually be _real_ —

                There was a knock at the door, and I jumped two feet in the air. I turned and opened it wide, and there was John, still holding his shoes, looking so obviously like he’d just woken up from having been shagged senseless.

                “You forgot to kiss me goodnight,” he said.

                He was smiling. _Smiling._

                I stared at him, and he leaned forward, pressing a soft kiss to my lips. “Goodnight, Sherlock,” he bid, and then went down the stairs.

                I stood standing in the doorway, watching him go.

                We really needed to have that talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so there's going to be a little angst... I couldn't resist!


	6. The Work

                “It’s about damn time,” said Lestrade’s voice, on the other end of the phone. “Haven’t you got my texts? Two more bodies, Sherlock. Two.”

                I wasn’t the type of person to feel guilt. I just wasn’t. I was a rare occurrence, if I did feel it, and the only times I ever really did were when John had pointed out that I should. And this case was no exception, really. The Wembley murderer, the one who had been cutting people in half, had killed twice more during the last week whilst I had been preoccupied with my first positive sexual excursion. It wasn’t my fault if Scotland Yard was too stupid to catch him on their own, so I felt nothing akin to guilt. But the morning after John had left at twelve-thirty AM, I had needed a distraction—and what better than a fresh dead body? “Address?” I asked.

                He was just giving it to me when John showed up in the doorway, holding coffee and a bag of scones.

                I blinked. I checked the time on the microwave. It was ten in the morning, and John, for all intensive purposes, should have been at the surgery—not at my flat with a soppy smile and breakfast. My plan had been to be gone before he arrived at lunchtime.

                Lestrade was reaching the end of his patience. “Sherlock? You still there?”

                “Be there in thirty,” I replied, and hung up.

                “Be where?” John set the cups and food on the table. “Do we have a case?”

                “What are you doing here?’

                John stopped fiddling with breakfast and looked at me oddly.

                “I mean,” I said, trying to backpedal. “It’s ten o’clock. Did you take the day off?”

                His face relaxed, and he shook his head. “It’s Saturday. Honestly, I don’t know how you function without basic knowledge of the days of the week.”

                I let out a breath. Saturday. Of course. And John had decided to spend it with me.

                (Joy.)

                He came over, smiling and shaking his head, and I watched him as he leaned forward and kissed me. He put the coffee in my hand and gave my arse a squeeze. “So, what’s on?” he asked, walking back toward the table as if nothing had happened. “Where are we going to be in thirty?”

                It was all so.... domestic, and nonchalant, and... ordinary. John, bringing me breakfast and kissing me good morning when he’d probably had a major row with Mary just hours before. But he didn’t look like he’d had a row. He didn’t even look tired. _I_ was tired, certainly—I’d spent the majority of the night awake and waiting for a phone call that he’d been eviscerated by his jealous ex-assassin wife. Or a knock on the door that would be her coming for me. She’d already tried to kill me once, and that was _before_ I’d slept with her husband.

                “Wembley,” I managed.

                “Ah, the halvsies one? Do you have any theories yet?” He leaned against the table and took a bite of a blueberry scone.

                “Not particularly,” I said. “I thought I’d take a look at the newest body, first.”

                John stopped chewing. “Newest? There’s been another body?”

                “Two more.” I braced myself for the guilt wave. “The last just found this morning.”

                To my surprise, he resumed his masticating. “Oh. In half again?”

                “Er... yes. Both of them. This last one also had severed limbs.”

                “Interesting,” he said, scarfing down the rest of his meal and brushing the crumbs off his hands. “I guess we’d better go solve it before he starts chopping them up beyond recognition.” He grabbed his coffee and headed back to the stairs.

                I stared after him, perplexed, before grabbing my coat and following along.

***

                John had been all over me in the cab. And then again, at the crime scene.

                Of course, when I say “all over,” I’m exaggerating. His knee brushed up against my knee for the majority of the ride there, jostling back and forth as we drove. His spread-legged stance was just a bit too wide to be completely comfortable, so I could tell he was doing it just so we had some sort of physical contact. He couldn’t stand to be away from me for any length of time, even the thirty minutes it took to get to Wembley. I tried to keep from smiling too much. It was a strange dichotomy, to be annoyed with him for being there, and also immensely enjoying his physical presence. I’d hoped to go out today, alone, to be distracted from our affair. My brain needed a rest from it so that I could go back to deducing it later with a fresh perspective. But there was no rest, it just kept on going.

                We showed up to the scene, a manufacturing plant, and Anderson was already there, collecting samples. “Well well well, look who decided to grace us with his presence,” he sneered. “What, the one-offs are too boring now? Have to wait for at least three bodies before you lend us a few of your precious brain cells?”

                “If you had any of your own, I wouldn’t have to,” I retorted, without my usual glee at insulting him. It was one thing for Lestrade to chide me, it was another for Anderson to do so. “What have you found so far?”

                He straightened up. “Cause of death by blunt-force trauma, like the others. The victims are beaten to death, and then he cuts them in half. Down the middle,” he added, as if it weren’t obvious by the state of the corpse on the floor. “Must have taken some amount of time.”

                I bent over the body and started to examine it. The cuts were indeed meticulous. And the bruises were on both sides of the body, larger ones up by the sternum, and—

                Suddenly, John was leaning down next to me. His shoulder pressed against mine, his hands on his knees. “What do you see?” he murmured gently, right next to my face. I swallowed and glanced at him. He was smirking, clearly one hundred percent aware that he was turning me on just by being close to me.

                “I...” I started, unsure of what to say. I wanted to impress him, more than anything, because I knew it got him hot, and then we’d at least be even. But all thoughts of the case had vanished in an instant. “Just give me a moment.” I moved away from him and walked round to the other side of the body. I crouched down, examining the finger-shaped bruises on the throat.

                To my misfortune, John followed me and crouched beside me. He wobbled in place, gathering his balance, and reached out to grasp my thigh to steady himself. His hand lingered there a little too long. He squeezed before he let go.

                I felt the beginnings of an erection, and stood quickly, wrapping my coat around me. “Were the other victims strangled as well?” I asked to distract myself. John was smirking more than ever, still squatting next to the body.

                “What?” Anderson blinked. “They all had bruises on their necks, if that’s what you mean. But not strangled. You know that. You’ve seen pictures of the others, haven’t you?”

                I had seen them, and I did know that. I had been desperately searching for something to say that had to do with the case. “I wanted to make sure you were paying attention.” I recovered, lamely.

                “Sherlock! John.” It was Lestrade, striding towards us from across the room. “Find anything yet? I was just speaking with the supervisor upstairs, he said the security system didn’t recognize any unauthorized entry last night.”

                “So it must be someone who works here,” said John. He stood up and grinned at me. “That makes things a bit easier, eh?” He was teasing me, the arsehole. His smile was gorgeous. I was going to have to punish him, later. I thought about the ways in which I could do that. I pulled my coat tighter around my waist.

                “That’s over two thousand people,” said Lestrade, heavily. “They need some kind of profile to help narrow it down.” He looked and me. “Sherlock? Anything?”

                I stared at him blankly. I had absolutely nothing. We’d been here for five minutes, and all I’d managed to do was state the obvious. On a normal day, I would have had at least eight theories ready to go.

                “The bruises are symmetrical,” Anderson said suddenly. All our faced turned to his. He was staring down at the body, and went over to it, pointing. “Look. Here, and here, on his neck. Three finger-shaped bruises, on either side.”

                “So, he grabbed him with both hands,” I scoffed. But I had started to see what he was talking about—it wasn’t just the bruises on the neck, the ones on the chest were—

                “Not just the neck, look, here. The same shape, on both sides, in almost the exact same spot. And here on the face. The cuts above the eyebrow. They’re mirror images of each other!” Anderson was getting excited, now. He moved over to the arms, which had both been severed at the elbow. “This one, here—“ he pointed to the left “—this one was cut deliberately, but this one—“ he pointed to the right “—looks like it was gashed, first. Probably in the struggle.” He looked up, at the rest of us. “Don’t you see? He evened it out. He wanted each side to be exact. He had to make each side exactly the same. He’s obsessive about it.” Anderson puffed up triumphantly. “Our killer has severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

                The three of us were silent. “Sherlock?” said Lestrade, looking for my affirmation. John stared at me, not saying a word.

                I avoided looking at any of them. “It would appear that there may be some...” I cringed, feeling sick, “merit, to Anderson’s theory.”

                The room was even more silent than before. “Let’s speak with the supervisor again,” Anderson finally said, to his boss. “Ask him which of his employees have the most organized workspaces. That should give us a good start.”

                “Yeah. Great, let’s go,” agreed Lestrade, if a little awed. He turned around, facing me and John again. “Er, thanks, you two. Appreciate you making the trip out.”

                And then they left.

                “Well,” John started, after they were gone. “That was—“

                I didn’t wait for him to finish. I spun around and stormed out of the room.

                “Sherlock! Wait up,” I heard John call behind me in the corridor. I kept walking, was almost jogging now. I slammed into the door at the end of the hall and flung it open as I exited the building. It smacked loudly on the side of the wall. It hadn’t been the same one we’d entered in, however; it was a side door, I hadn’t known where it would go. I’d just followed the nearest “Exit” signs I could find.

                Apparently the door opened to the small, chain-linked area where they kept the bins. I looked around for a way back to the street, and saw that there was a gate—which was padlocked. I jiggled the lock roughly, but it didn’t budge. I banged on the fence in frustration.

                “Sherlock.” John had caught up to me. “Just calm down.”

                “Calm!” I whirled on him.

                “Look, it’s not your fault. It was my fault. I’m sorry. I distracted you on purpose, and—“

                “Yes, you did.” I paced around the enclosed area.

                “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I shouldn’t have interfered.”

                “Three people have died, John. Two of those could have been prevented. If you hadn’t _interfered_.” I spat it at him, almost tasting the venom in my words.

                John stopped coming towards me. “What?”

                I was livid. I hadn’t solved the case—Anderson had. Anderson, of all the sodding imbeciles on the planet, had been the one to—and I had stood there, like a fool, completely and utterly useless. And all because John had been there, he’d distracted me, but it was more than that. It was more than just a little distraction, he’d somehow rewired my whole bloody brain. I didn’t care about cases anymore. I hadn’t, for a long time.

                And now it wasn’t just apathy. I couldn’t even solve them.

                “This isn’t going to work,” I said, muttering to myself as I kept pacing. I turned to face him. “I can’t see you anymore.”

                He stared at me. “What?” he said, a second time.

                “I mean, at all. I can’t see you, in any capacity.”

                “You—“ John began, and his voice had gone all wobbly. “You don’t—“

                “Don’t you see what’s going on?” I interrupted. “I can’t even think anymore. I can’t think of anything but you. You’ve—you’ve _destroyed_ me.”

                He rolled his eyes. “Oh come off it, Sherlock—“

                “Shut up!” I shouted, and I knew I was losing control. But I had already lost it, days ago, perhaps months, years ago. I just hadn’t seen it before. “Just open your eyes for one second! The Work, John. The Work is _me_. It’s all I that have, and now I can’t even do that. You’ve ruined it. You’ve ruined _everything_.” I was shaking.

                “I haven’t,” John said. I could tell it was taking a great effort for him to stay calm. “I’ve made it better. Think about it, Sherlock. How many more crimes have you solved because of me? Because I was there, for you to talk it through? Because I was there, to write about it and show it to the public? How many people have come to you, how many of them have you helped, because I—”

                “I don’t care! I don’t care about any of it! That’s the whole point, don’t you see? This is supposed to be who I am. I’m the consulting detective, I solve the mystery when no one else can. When the rest of the world is lost, and confused, I shine light. It’s my... _purpose_.” I found the word I’d been searching for. It was dramatic and ridiculous, and saying it gave me chills. “And I don’t care about it anymore. All I care about is how I feel when you’re here, having sex, being in _love_. I’m just like the rest of them, all those other worthless bipedal _animals_ , who waste any potential for greatness that they ever had, on sentiment.”

                John was quiet for several seconds. His mind moved so slowly, it was almost disgusting. I watched him, trying to piece two coherent thoughts together, and I was repulsed. I couldn’t believe I had been attracted to him just moments ago.

                “You’re scared,” he said, finally, in a quiet voice. “I get it. I’m scared too.”

                My eyes went wide. “Are you even listening to me?”

                “You’ve been so scared that emotions would do this to you. That’s why you avoided them for so long. But you’re overreacting, Sherlock. I’m sorry, but you are.”

                “Overreacting?” I repeated. I pointed to the building, for emphasis. “Were you not just in there? Did you not just see what happened? Anderson solved the case. Bloody _Anderson_!”

                “He didn’t bloody solve it! He noticed some bruising. That’s all. They don’t even have a suspect yet. They barely have a profile.”

                “They will,” I muttered. “They’ll have him before we even get back to Baker Street. Just you watch.”

                “Sherlock, Jesus.” John came forward and laid a hand on my shoulder, to steady me. I wrenched it out of his grasp. His expression grew hard and he stood up straighter, his fists clenched at his sides. “Being in love hasn’t ruined you. It’s not fucked up your Work. It’s made it better, if you think about it. Just stop freaking out for a second.”

                “This was a mistake,” I said, completely ignoring his advice.

                John sighed and ran his hands over his face. “Look, why don’t we get a cab, and just... think, you know? I won’t try to talk to you at all, not until we’re home. Okay?”

                “I don’t have to think.”

                His eyes were pleading now, a hint of desperation behind the pity. “Okay, but can you please just try? For me?” He stepped closer, reaching out again to touch my elbow. “I know you love me. And I also know your whole life has been about avoiding love because it doesn’t make sense. But it does. And I... respect the fact that you have to work that out on your own.”

                I felt the warmth of his fingers through my sleeve. An intrusion of my own bodily temperature. It felt foreign and welcome at the same time. Part of me wanted to grab his face and kiss him. To give in, and let everything else go to shit. But I couldn’t do that. If I didn’t stop this now, I wouldn’t be able to go back. I would never get the Work back, again.

                “It was never going to be easy, Sherlock. But don’t give up, just because it’s hard.”

                I shook my head. “This is beyond hard, John. It’s impossible.”

                John’s eyes were glassy. They swam in great pools. “I never knew you to think anything was impossible.”

                Christ. All this time, and he still didn’t understand me. “Of course things are impossible. Many things are impossible. That’s how I can arrive at the right answer. I eliminate the impossible first. And what’s left is the truth.”

                He didn’t have a response for me on that. He clenched my elbow harder, then sniffed and let it go. He looked at the ground instead of at my face. “I’m gonna get that cab,” he said, and glanced at me quickly before turning around and going back into the building.


	7. Storyteller

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please heed the additional tags I added, for this chapter. Things are getting a bit messy...
> 
> (Also, no offence to Pembridge Palace whatsoever, I just did a quick internet search for a cheap hotel in London that wasn't too far from Baker Street.)

                The ride home was silent, as John promised. Although I wasn’t thinking about how to figure love into my life like he wanted me to. The Work and love just didn’t mix. Like oil and water, they didn’t blend. I couldn’t have it both ways, even though I wanted to, and John wanted to. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you want something.

                What I did think about during the ride was how to make John understand. He was determined—adamant, in his John-Watson way—to not give up. I didn’t know how to make him do it, only that I had to, somehow. Otherwise, he would never leave me alone to recover from this.

                We pulled up to 221B, paid the cabby and went up the stairs. John hung up his coat and immediately went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Tea was his way of setting us up for a “civilized” conversation. (I suppose he figured that we were British, after all, we wouldn’t have a screaming match over _tea_.) While he was getting out the cups, I switched to my new tactic.

                “What about Mary?”

                This was the one topic we had avoided, and I had a hunch that I knew why. Because in this, John was faced with his own version of oil and water: his marriage to Mary, and his love for me. Those two didn’t mix, either.

                “And Annalise,” I went on, using her name. Normally I just called her “the baby,” because it was easier to divorce myself from any trappings of sentiment that way. But that was the opposite of my goal here now.

                John had frozen, his back to me. He didn’t say anything.

                “You made a vow to them, John. That was never going to be easy, either. You ask me not to give up on us, but by that same logic, you can’t give up on them. That’s why you haven’t told her yet. You’re still trying to decide which life you want.” I took a deep breath. “I’m making it easy for you. Go back to your family. You owe it to Mary, to keep the promise you made on your wedd—“

                “I told her,” John interrupted.

                I blinked at the back of his head.

                He turned around, slowly, and leaned back against the counter, gripping it with both hands. He stared at the kitchen table. “I told her the first night. After we first kissed. I went home and checked on Anna, since she’s been sick. And then I sat her down, and told her I was leaving her.”

                My heart was beating rapidly. I felt dizzy, all of a sudden. This wasn’t at all what I had expected.

                “I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want to—“ he smiled a little, bitterly “—scare you off. I knew that you were going to need some time to adjust to everything. Putting you in the middle of a marriage, that’s a lot of pressure, you know. I figured you’d have a hard enough time coming to terms with just being in a relationship, period.” He looked up at me, finally. “Guess I called it.”

                I was breathing loudly and quickly, my chest was heaving. It might have been a panic attack. I couldn’t use the excuse of scurvy, this time. “You’re an idiot,” I wheezed.

                “No.” John shook his head. “I just know when something’s _right.”_

                The only weapon left in my arsenal—guilt—had been neutralized. I didn’t have another contingency plan. I had been sure that John would go back to his family. I had been sure of it.

                “This is right, you and me,” he continued. He pushed himself off the counter and came toward me. “I know you don’t see it now, but you will. So I’ll wait. I’ll wait as long as it takes.”

                Bugger bugger bugger bugger _fuck_.

                I backed away from him. He kept coming. He was going to back me into a piece of furniture, or the wall, if I didn’t do something soon.

                “I don’t love you,” I said.

                John stopped, a foot away from me.

                “I don’t love you,” I repeated, more firmly.

                “Stoppit,” he said.

                “I’m incapable,” I kept on, anyway. “I’ve told you before. You just pretended you forgot.”

                “Stoppit, Sherlock.” John was looking very angry. Perfect. I felt triumphant and sick to my stomach, at once.

                “I only said it because I knew that it was what you wanted to hear.” (The opposite of true.) “You kissed me. I liked it. I was curious. It was the only way.”

                John’s hands were in fists again, clenching and unclenching, on both sides of his hips. “Don’t you fucking lie to me,” he said, and he was furious. “After everything, Sherlock. Don’t you fucking lie.”

                “I’m not lying!” I lied, in a way that no one would ever believe in a million years.

                The kettle started to boil, but John was ignoring it. He stared at me for a long time, breathing fiercely. “I’ve either destroyed your life by making you love me,” he said, finally, “or you were faking and never loved me at all. You can’t have it both ways.”

                Somehow (hard to believe, I know), he’d found the contradiction. I ground my teeth together in frustration. “I don’t want any of this anymore. How do I make that clear to you?” I stepped toward him, vehement. “I want you to leave. I want you to leave, and not come back, and I never want to see you again. I want to forget you ever existed. How do I make that clear?” My voice was booming now. Probably all the neighbors could hear. “I don’t want you to wait, I don’t want you to try and convince me, I don’t want it, any of it.” I was spitting, practically snarling.

                John’s eyes welled, and he was so _weak,_ and I _hated_ him. “You don’t mean that,” he said, in a small voice, still, still not believing me, and something inside me snapped.

                I grabbed the lapels of his coat and twisted them. He tilted his head, almost as if he thought I might kiss him, and it was so utterly _ridiculous_ —I tasted bile coming up from my throat, and I shoved him backward as hard as I could.

                He flew into the kitchen table. It screeched on the floor and there was a crash of glass as a few leftover test tubes from my last experiment fell off and shattered. He caught himself of the edge and looked at me, his eyes wide with surprise. I came toward him again and grabbed his coat to stand him up, and before he could react I spun and threw him to the door. He tripped and fell, then scrambled to stand again, looking at me in awe. And I realized, that though he’d hit me plenty of times, in all the years we’d known each other, this was one of the the first times I’d really ever done to him. “Get out,” I hissed, in a voice I hadn’t heard come out of me in a very long while. The last time I remembered it, Moriarty was telling me he was Richard Brook, the storyteller—just a storyteller, it's on DVD. “Get out, before I make you.”

                And holy Jesus God, John actually looked frightened. He never looked at me like that—he never looked at _anyone_ like that— not ever, and I knew what I must have looked like to him. For the first time, he was noticing I was bigger than he was, and I’d got more muscle as I’d aged, and I knew how to fight, perhaps better than he even did. That I was smarter, and stronger, and motivated, and I could hurt him, really hurt him, if I wanted. “Okay, Sherlock,” he whispered, and took a step backward toward the door. “Okay, I’m going.” He moved to turn, then looked back. “Pembridge Palace. That’s where I’m staying, if you... change your mind.” And then he went out the door, and fled down the stairs. Out of my life.

                Just like I wanted.

***

                I made it to just after four a.m. before I gave in and showed up at John’s hotel room door. I knocked rapidly, and it opened in less than five seconds. There was John, standing in his underpants and a t-shirt, looking like he’d been through hell and back. The lines on his face were long, the circles dark under his eyes. He sagged with relief against the door frame when he saw it was me.

                “Oh thank God,” he said.

                I pushed the door open wide and he let go and backed up, to let me in. I kept walking to him until I had him cornered up against the wall, afraid, again. The door swung back on its hinges and shut with a definitive “click.”

                “I’m going to fuck you, immediately,” I told him.

                John made a high whimpering sound and I pinned his arms by his sides. I bent to suck on his neck, hard enough to leave bruises. He sighed with pleasure. “Please,” he kept whispering. He tried to lift his hands to my clothes but I pinned them back again, with force. “Oh, please.”

                I sucked his neck again and said, “I’m going to fuck you so hard, you won’t be able to walk.”

                I was still livid. Immediately when John had left the flat, I’d regretted everything. Alone in the quiet, staring at his chair, I was reminded of how miserable I was without him, how I could barely even function. There was no way that I could go back to who I’d been, as much as I’d wanted to. This was it. This was who I was, now. I was nothing, except in love with John.

                I hated him for doing that to me, for altering the way I saw the world. I had been better before, when I hated sex, when I didn’t care, when I was a sociopath, when I could devote every ounce of thought and energy to solving crimes. I was brilliant. I was a genius. Now anyone could beat me at a puzzle, even half-witted tits like Anderson. Anyone could beat me, because my mind wasn’t perfectly focused anymore. It kept going back to John, to the sound of his laugh, to the taste of his skin, to the feeling of him under me.

                “Get on the bed,” I commanded, and released him. He tore away from the wall and flung himself back on the mattress, across the stained floral bedspread. “Over,” I said, and shoved him so that he was lying on his stomach. He writhed on the bed, humping it to get some friction, his arse lifting and dipping with the movement. “Stop that,” I ordered. He wasn’t allowed to like this. He didn’t get a reward for ruining my life. I pushed him back down and held him with one hand as I unzipped my trousers and brought out my cock.

                John squirmed and moaned under my hand. I squeezed his arse, digging my fingernails in. Then I hooked the fingers of both hands into the waistband of his pants and practically ripped them off. John lifted his hips and went to his knees, his forehead resting on the bed between his arms. “Yes, Sherlock, yes—“ I got behind him and spread open his cheeks. I spit onto my hand and shoved two fingers in, right from the start. He made a noise of pain.

                “This is going to hurt,” I told him.

                “I don’t care.” His words were muffled. “I don’t care, please.”

                “That’s right,” I said, getting into position. “You’ll take it however you can get it.”

                “Yes,” he choked, with desperation, even though it was reversed, and that was actually me, who would take anything from him. Me, who needed it, needed it.

                I spat again, wetting my cock, and gripped his hips, and pushed in.

                “Oh,” John cried, because it hurt. It probably hurt a lot. He was so tight, and the spittle was not enough, and it was nothing at all like the last time we’d done this. In fact, he was probably still sore, from the last time. “Oh, yes, God.”

                “Shut up,” I said, though I loved it when he talked during. “This isn’t for you.”

                “I don’t care,” John spoke thickly, turning his head to one side so that his voice was clear. “Sherlock, I don’t care. I just need you.”

                “Shut up,” I said again. I could feel my breath hitching. “I’m the one that needs you.”

                “Oh, love,” John cooed. He reached back around with one arm to grasp my hip as I thrust into him.

                “I need you, God damn it.” My hips snapped forward, forward, forward. “I’m nothing without you.”

                “I know, love.”

                My voice was breaking. “John.”

                “Please don’t leave me again.”

                “No.”

                “Say you’ll never leave me again.” His hand moved off my hip and down to his cock. I could see the muscles tensing in his arm as he brought himself off.

                “Never,” I managed. The world was going white.

                “Sherlock.”

                I was coming. “I’ll never leave you again.”

                John came too, all over the flowers on the bedspread. He groaned and breathed raggedly, as he did. I finished my own orgasm and pulled out of him and watched my come drip down the inside of his thigh. I bent down, on impulse, and licked it. He shivered, still pumping weakly into his hand, spurting out the last bit of his semen.

                When I knew he was done, I turned him over, gently, so that he was lying on his side. He was still shivering, and he reached out to grab onto my shirt. “Kiss me,” he said, and I did, messily. I used my tongue, nuzzled his nose. His breathing was still uneven, as if he was crying, but his eyes stayed dry.

                We kissed and kissed until John stopped shivering. Then we pulled off the soiled comforter, and got into bed with just the sheet, and held each other.

                “Never leave me again,” mumbled John, already half asleep.

                “I won’t,” I promised.

                By the time he awoke, I had already left, for good.


	8. Best-Kept Secret

                And now, ladies and gentlemen, for Sherlock Holmes’ best kept secret:

                I actually really like my parents.

                Hate my brother, he’s abominable. Truly awful human being, can’t stand him. But my parents, well, I can’t think of two people I’d rather be with in a crisis. (Ahem. Not that, you know, I’m in one.)

                My mother is the smart one, if that hadn’t already been established. She’s the practical one, the one that knows exactly what you were doing before you even thought of telling her (and well, Mycroft and I had to get it from _somewhere_ ) and more importantly knows what to do now. When Mycroft and I were growing up the “what to do now” mostly entailed punishments for our various antics (mine, experiments in the house; Mycroft’s, torturing me), but as we got older and started to have problems that had nothing to do with making trouble at home, she was a wealth of (mostly good) advice that we could always count on whenever something came up that we just couldn’t solve on our own. Admittedly this was a very short window of time, between making trouble for her and trusting our own instincts enough not to have to ask for help. But through it my mother was our main go-to.

                If my mother is the smart one, my father, well—isn’t. When we were kids Mycroft would often sneer and mutter about how on Earth my mother could have fallen in love with a man like that, sentiment made people awfully stupid, etc. etc., because my father wasn’t practical, and didn’t have an answer for everything, and was the last person you would go to for advice on the ethics of blackmail when attempting to work your way into a high-powered government position. No, instead, my father was—in a word— _kind_. He wasn’t the person you went to when you wanted to solve your problems. He was the person you went to when you wanted to have a good cry. (Not that I, erm, ever did.) He was good at smiling and stroking your hair and holding you in comfy warm embraces while you demonstrated your weakness of human emotion. My mother would have no patience for crying, if you had to cry you had to go to Father, because she couldn’t understand a word you were saying and how the devil was she supposed to help you when you couldn’t even communicate the problem? As I got older and had less need for sobbing, I still went to my father, though not as often, when I just... didn’t want to talk. He has this quiet way about him, his eyes crinkle when he smiles, and he makes you hot cocoa, and talks about the weather, and about his friends cheating at cards during their weekly meet up, and other such meaningless chatter, and I can’t explain it, it’s just so... bloody comforting.

                I don’t know that Mycroft ever got to experience it, growing up. I’m not sure that he ever had a situation arise where he’d wanted to. I was always the weaker of the two of us, I always had a bit more emotion, and even (of course) went through a period of time where I blamed my father for that, and hated him for it, and for my mother for choosing his genetics, because all I wanted to do was be a cold, calculated fish like my brother. (That’s the curse of little brothers—they can’t help but look up to the bigger ones.) I still blamed him to some extent, but I’d learned how to control that emotional part of myself, and though I’ll never admit this to anyone, it was nice to drop that control once in a while. My father was the person I went to for that.

                Home was the first place I thought of going when I left John’s hotel. I knew I had to leave him behind, for good, but I didn’t know how exactly to do that. I thought and thought and realized that I would probably have to leave London altogether, which was not something I was keen to do. I had other friends there and I knew the police and I had established a presence for my consulting detective services and I couldn’t imagine having to start over somewhere else. But I did have to get out of London, if only temporarily. So I hopped on a train to my childhood home.

                I was sure of which of my parents I wanted to see. My mother would be the one to give me the advice I needed. The subject was a delicate one, but I needed to face the cold hard truth of it. I’d already indulged too much in sentiment, which is how I’d got in this position in the first place. I had no need to sit with my head on my dad’s shoulder for a bit first. But I hadn’t announced I was coming so I was going to get what I’d get when I walked in the door.

                Turned out it was mother. She was making breakfast, I’d completely forgot it was Sunday morning and she always made a big breakfast on Sundays. The front door was unlocked (always was) so I tiptoed in and sauntered up to the doorframe to the kitchen and watched her bustle about for a bit. After several seconds I suspected she didn’t know I was there, but as I opened my mouth to announce my presence she cut me off instead.

                “I think you’ll be wanting your father today,” she said, not turning around from the stove, and I smiled because she was still Mum, she still knew things without even having to look at you.

                “Really? I’m in need of some advice.”

                Mum turned around and gave me a look, still flipping sausages in the pan on the stove. “I know,” she said, turning back, “but this is his area.”

                “What?” I was annoyed that she was dismissing my problem as unworthy of her time. “Sex and feelings ruining genius intellect? Call me crazy but I figured that'd be right up your street.”

                My mother had been transporting the sausages onto a napkin-lined plate but she faltered in mid movement. Then she finished and turned off the burner. “Sit down, Sherlock.”

                I pulled out a chair and sat at the table. I was going to get it now. It wasn’t going to be sugar-coated whatsoever after talking to her that way, but I was going to get it, all right. I steepled my fingers on the table and waited.

                She took off her apron and sat down next to me, smoothing out the wrinkles of her blouse. She folded her hands in her lap and sighed. “I’ve never told either of you kids this, but I didn’t plan on becoming pregnant.”

                I raised my eyebrows in surprise and glee and leaned forward. Oh, this was too good. “So Mycroft was an accid–“

                “Don’t you dare tell him,” said my mother, giving me cold-eye death stare that I’d inherited from her. I clamped my mouth shut and frowned. It would have been so satisfying to hold something like this over Mycroft. I had already been planning when I was going to reveal it to him. “Promise me,” she warned.

                “Fine,” I replied, reluctantly.

                “Good.” She sat back in her chair. “If you think about it, I’m sure it explains a lot. I didn’t know how to be a mother. I didn’t want to. I was well on my way to winning the Nobel Prize in mathematics, it was only my career that mattered, but your father just happened to be in the right place at the right time, when I was feeling vulnerable.... You know, it’s harder for a woman, because whether we like it or not we are on a schedule, and there’s this window of opportunity, if you want to have children. I knew I didn’t, I was positive, but I couldn’t help looking at a passing family on the street and wondering what it would be like, and if I was making a mistake choosing something else.”

                I watched her carefully. I was a little shocked. My mother had always maintained, throughout my entire life, that the choice she made to be with my father and to have children was one that was deliberate.

                “When I found out I was pregnant,” she went on, “my immediate reaction was to have an abortion. I wasn’t even going to tell your father. We had been seeing each other from time to time, he’d wanted to go steady but I had no desire to, though I’d kept going back for more. I just enjoyed his company. He was calm, and solid, this sort of still presence in my every-moving world. He grounded me, in a way that I’d never been before.” She took another breath, shaking herself to get back on track. “When I told him about the baby, I hadn’t planned to at all. I’d planned to break it off with him, actually. But I got to his flat and he could tell something was wrong and he made me tea and smiled, you know how he is, gets to you even though he’s not trying to. And I just blurted it out. It was wholly embarrassing. He just sat down across from me, looking so bloody kind, and reached his hand across the table to pat my hand, and he said, and I’ll never forget it, ‘I’ll support whatever you decide to do, but for what it’s worth, I would be honored to raise a family with the love of my life.’

                “I knew he wanted it. You know how we know things.” She nodded at me. “I knew he wanted to be a father, so badly, and that I’d sucked him into my trap, like I knew how to do when I wanted, and he was oblivious to it. I’d been so horrid, I was so horrid, and here was this wonderful person, who I didn’t deserve, who’d go through the rest of his life broken if I didn’t give him what he wanted.”

                “Guilt?” I asked, incredulous. “You had a baby with him, for guilt?” I couldn’t believe it. I may not have been the most well-versed in successful relationships, but even I knew that was a recipe for disaster.

                My mother chuckled. “No, Sherlock. I told him that if I did have the baby, I would eventually be unhappy, and come to resent him, and that I was going to have an abortion, and that was the end of it.”

                “But you didn’t.”

                “No, I didn’t. I put it off and put it off, and then I really asked myself why I was putting it off, and I didn’t know the answer, or want to. But eight months later, I was in labour in the hospital, and I phoned your father, and I said, ‘Do you still want to have a family with me?’ I hadn’t talked to him in months but he didn’t miss a beat. He said, ‘Of course I do,’ and I said, and I quote, ‘Well, I’m at the hospital. Come on and get it.'

                “I didn’t understand the decision I’d made, for perhaps the first time in my life. I really struggled with it. I wanted to go back to my career directly after, but we didn’t have money to hire a nanny, and so I became a housewife. I had to cook and clean and change nappies all day long and I hated every second of it. As soon as your father got home from work I would hand him your brother and shut myself up in the study, pouring over math equations, until bed. I was depressed. I was miserable. I wasn’t maternal, not in the least, and your brother...” She looked sad, a faraway expression in her eyes. “I didn’t realize what I’d done until his sixth birthday. It had been his first year in school. We’d asked him who of his friends he’d like to invite for a party, and he just looked at me, puzzled, and said, ‘Of course I don’t have friends, Mummy. What would be the point?’ And he genuinely didn’t know, or didn’t care.

                “Later that night, I lay next to your father in bed and cried. Because I’d done that to him. I’d drilled into his head, in the six short years he’d been on this Earth, that he needed to focus on his career, his purpose in life, and not let sentiment get in the way the same way I had. But in doing so, I’d made him into a machine. He wasn’t human any more.

                “I finally understood why I’d fallen in love with your father, and why I’d kept the baby, even though I could have given it up and stuck with my career. Whether we like it or not, human beings were made to love. Perhaps it is a weakness, sometimes, but I think more often than not, it can be a strength. Because we’re not machines. We’re fallible, all of us, and when we fall, it’s the people who love us that help us get up again. I could have been a great mathematician. But I was human, too. And it was time to stop punishing myself for that. I had to accept that I was emotional, that I was lonely without people to love in my life. People to care about. Even if it was only two of them.

                “It was the first time I’d ever cried in front of your father, and he held me until I couldn’t anymore. He said that it was okay, that Mycroft was only six, but I knew I had ruined him already. I realized I’d passed on the same struggle to him that I’d always had, and it was no bloody way to go through life. I looked at your father, who was happy, who was the epitome of a loving human being, and I thought, God, what have I done. So I told him, I want to try it again. I want to get it right, this time. I have to get it right. And so we had you.” She looked at me, her eyes swimming.

                I had been silent through her entire story. I didn’t particularly like hearing about Mycroft’s childhood, I knew he’d always been unfeeling but I hadn’t realized that my mother blamed herself for it. I separated my fingers and touched them back together, one by one. “So what, you’re telling me I just need to accept that I’ll never have some great purpose or legacy, beyond being just another human being?” I shook my head, trying to stay calm. “That’s not good enough. I want more.”

                My mother sighed, and her eyes pitied me. “Then you’ll spend your whole life chasing an impossible dream.”

                This wasn’t the sort of advice I had been looking for. “You do realize you’re telling me to just give up.”

                “I’m telling you to fight,” she said, forcefully. “Accepting who you are isn’t giving up. It’s bloody hard. There’s some balance there, Sherlock, some balance between making your mark on the world, and making time to satisfy your desire for love. And you have to fight to find that balance. Just like I did. I’d hoped it would come naturally to you, the way that it came to your father, but it wasn’t to be, you’re too much like me. If you think about it, Mycroft is the one like your father. Yes, he’s career-driven, and focused, and doesn’t have friends or lovers or any desire for them, but he has love in his life—he has you. Ironically, in trying to get it right with a second child, I’d finally got it right with my first.” She smiled to herself. “Myc never once questioned his love for you. He never tried, in his entire life, not to care. He just worked it in. It was easy for him. It wasn’t so easy for me. And unfortunately, it’s not going to be easy for you, either. I’m sorry, love. You’re going to have to fight. You’re going to have to be strong, and brave, and unrelenting. But if you’re all those things, you’ll get there. You’ll find it, someday. I promise you that.”

                At this point, my father entered the kitchen, having been out in his shop, tinkering around with the classic car that he was forever trying to rebuild. (Yes, he was a walking cliché, tell me about it.) He smiled brightly when he saw me, and looked from me to my mother, and I knew he could tell something heavy was on. But he did what he always did: he came over and kissed the top of my head, and then the top of my mother’s head, and went over to the stove, and got out the eggs, and asked how many we’d each like, and went on cooking breakfast like it was the most natural thing in the world. Both my mother and I watched him, and she got teary-eyed again. And as I looked from him to her I knew, suddenly and completely, that there was something inside me that wanted what they had together. I’d always wanted it, my whole life. I’d been trying to avoid it, because it was going to be difficult, and messy, but I couldn’t anymore. I sighed at the ceiling. “Two eggs, please.”

                God damn it all. Why did mothers always have to be right?


	9. Flying

                I found John on the roof of Bart’s hospital.

                I went up there as a last resort (well, second to last—going to his and Mary’s home was my very last resort, because I knew that if I did, Mary would meet me in the doorway with a gun pointed straight at my head). I’d went to every other place I could think of after finding out he’d checked out of the hotel: Baker Street, Lestrade’s, Molly’s, Mike’s, to the Yard, to the sites of old cases, to Angelo’s, to the Dim Sum restaurant we ate at after the first crime we solved together. I even phoned Mycroft—which was a mistake, of course—“Little brother, I do hope you’re not asking me to use government resources to once again clean up the sentimental mess you’ve made.” I had to hang up on him before I told him that his conception was an unwanted accident. Keeping that secret was going to be excruciatingly tedious, I could tell already.

                Bart’s was perhaps the most morbid place he could go, and I only thought of it because I’d had a brief and ridiculous notion that John might be so distraught as to off himself. The most dramatic place he could do it would be from the roof of Bart’s, and he was a drama queen, after all, so that’s where I went. The cab ride there had me muttering to myself about how stupid the idea was and how John had a daughter and a fairly good life even if he was in love with a complete arsehole and he’d never, ever, never do something so rash. I went up the stairs rolling my eyes at how much time I was wasting pursuing such an incredibly unlikely hunch. So when I got to the roof and opened to the door to see him sitting on the ground with his back to the ledge, I felt the breath punched out of me with surprise and horror.

                John was sitting and resting his arms on his knees and he looked up when he heard the door open. “You found me,” he said. “Figured you would.”

                “What are you doing up here?”

                John traced lines in the gravel on the concrete underneath him. “I used to come here, sometimes.”

                I took a few steps toward him.

                “It started after you jumped,” he continued. “The last place you were alive, it was more comforting than visiting your grave. And private, for the most part. The occasional hospital worker would come up to have a smoke. But other than that, it was a good place to be alone and think.”

                He hadn’t said anything about suicide, so I began to relax. “What did you think about?”

                “Oh,” said John, “just about how I could have helped you. How I could have prevented your death. Things that I could have said. Should have said. You know.” He picked up a piece of gravel between his thumb and forefinger and tossed it forward with a flick of his wrist. “Survivor’s guilt. The usual tosh.”

                “What sorts of things?” I asked, suddenly curious.

                John chuckled softly. “Doesn’t matter now, does it? You weren’t actually suicidal. I would have just embarrassed myself.”

                I sunk down to a seat beside him. “Would you have told me you loved me?”

                John stopped playing with the gravel.

                “That’s what I would have said. If you...” I trailed off, not wanting to name it.

                “Would you,” John accused, not as a question.

                “I need you,” I said, and then all in one breath: “I love you and I need you.”

                John picked up several stones and put them in his palm. He curled his hand into a fist like he was a superhero who could crush them in his bare grip. He sniffed once, and then let the rocks fall out. I could see the little red and purple imprints they’d left on his skin. “I never wanted to ruin you.”

                “You didn’t,” I said, quickly. “You couldn’t. I was wrong.”

                “I don’t want to distract you from what’s important.”

                “You’re important too.”

                John shook his head. “I just couldn’t help it, you know? You’re a bloody force of nature, Sherlock. Larger than life. Larger than anything I could ever measure up to. I couldn’t help falling in love with you. You pulled me in. Like bloody gravity. I couldn’t stop myself from wanting you, even if I tried.”

                “I’m not asking you to.” Was he even listening to me?

                “I never expected to replace anything else in your life. I don’t want to interrupt your work. I’m happy enough just to watch you, and wait, for any opportunity you want to give me for anything more—friendship, sex, love. Even if those opportunities are few and far between. Even if there’s never another opportunity again. Do you understand?” He looked at me. “I just want to be near you. Even if you forget I’m in the room.”

                He was acting like I hadn’t said anything at all to refute those ridiculous ideas. I didn’t know what else to say, so I opted for a more direct approach. I grabbed his face and kissed him.

                The kiss was awkward, because of how we were sitting. Our lips didn’t quite match up, and our teeth clanked loudly together. I pulled back and looked him in the eyes. “Are you going to listen to me, now?” John blinked at me, and nodded. “I want both. I want you, and I want the Work. I just have to figure out how to make it possible.”

                “I—I know,” said John, a little bewildered. “That’s what I’ve been saying. I’ll fit in wherever you want me to.”

                I shook my head. “No. You’re acting like you’re second best to it. Which you’re most certainly not.” I let go of his face, and took a deep breath. “I went to my parents’ house today,” I began. “And my mum—she said—“

                “I know.” John spoke suddenly. “I went there, too.”

                That stopped me. I gaped at him, thrown completely off pace. “You... you went to my _parents’_?”

                He nodded, and smiled a little. “We must have just missed each other. I took the train after l woke up and found you gone. I thought they might help me to understand you.... How you got this way. How I could help you. I was really confused when they saw it was me and started laughing. And when your mum told your dad it was his turn.” His smile grew. “Good man, your dad. Knows just how to calm you down. He told me some things, about him and your mum. You and her are pretty similar, you know.”

                “Yeah,” I said, still in a daze.

                “Basically he told me what I already knew before: that if I really wanted to be in your life, I’d have to get comfortable with waiting. That patience was key. I would need to be present, and to be patient, and that you’d come around in your own time. So that’s what I’m going to do.” John looked at me. “But you should know that it’s not by choice anymore, to wait around like this. Not after you left like you did. I’m doing it because it’s the only thing I can do. Because I need you, you’re absolutely right, I’ll take anything I can get. It’s pathetic, and it’s fucking scary, Sherlock. I’ll really do anything.”

                He just looked so sad, and defeated, that I didn’t know what to do to change his mind. It wasn’t going to be like that. I wasn’t going to just ignore him as he hung around me like an abused puppy waiting for table scraps. (Well, maybe if there was a _really_ complicated case that demanded all my mental faculties. I supposed I couldn’t rule that out.) But I didn’t know how to convince him.

                And then, suddenly, a crazy idea popped into my head.

                The more I thought about it, the more ludicrous it became. It was so insane that I thought it just might work. “Anything?” I asked, my eyebrows raised.

                John nodded solemnly, and I smiled.

                “Then marry me.”

***

                In my dreams, I am flying.

                It starts as a tingling sensation, in my fingers and in my toes. The skin quivers with restlessness, through the palms of my hands and the bottoms of my feet, up my legs and across my arms. Before I know it, I’m levitating, up, up above the street, above buildings, above all of London. I can see for miles, to different cities, and countries, across entire oceans. I rotate in a circle around myself, peering out into the world before choosing a direction. And then I form my hands into fists and lean forward, and off I zoom with a thrill and a whoop of joy.

                They are utterly ridiculous dreams. I’ve only ever told Anna about them, because they were her fault anyway—her favorite cartoon right now includes a character that flies around of her own accord, and I’ve apparently watched far too much of it with her. When I wake up after having one, I march to her bedroom (John’s old room, Mrs. Hudson and I converted it one day when he was out doing the shopping—and he cried more when he saw it than he did at our wedding, which is really saying something, as he could barely even repeat the bloody vows for all his blubbering), make a face and groan and ask her why she’s put these silly dreams into my head.

                But the girl never feels guilty, she just begs me to tell her about them, about the experience of flying, about the places I explore. So I do, of course. Most of the time she’s in them, and so is John, and the three of us have some pretty absurd adventures. If I’m working on a case at the time, the facts usually show up in one way or another. I’ve actually solved a few of them that way—I’ll be in the middle of retelling a dream, and have an epiphany, and race down the stairs to tell John with Anna at my heels. John gets annoyingly curious about how I arrived at the conclusion, but I’m good at evading his probes. The sappy, fond look that he’d have on his face if he’d ever found out the truth would probably make me sick up right then and there.

                Though, ladies and gentlemen, just between you and me... they’re the best dreams I’ve ever had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to post! There were the holidays, and then the rewrites... I'm full of excuses, I know.
> 
> I dearly hope you enjoyed the story. As always, thanks so much for reading! Kudos, comments, and constructive criticism are most welcome :) <3


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